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EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED  EDITION 


VOLUME  21 
THE  CHRONICLES 
OF  AMERICA  SERIES 
ALLEN  JOHNSON 
EDITOR 

GERHARD  R.  LOMER 
CHARLES  W.  JEFFERYS 
ASSISTANT  EDITORS 


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NEW  HAVEN i  YALE 
TORONTO:  GLASGOW 

LONDON;  RUE  PTE 
OXFORD  U> . VE 

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A[  |Ci fsl ’•  X>S  ADM” 


8RARY 


THE  PATHS  OF 
INLAND  COMMERCE 

A  CHRONICLE  OF 
TRAIL,  ROAD,  AND  WATERWAY 
BY  ARCHER  B.  HULBERT 


NEW  HAVEN:  YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
TORONTO:  GLASGOW,  BROOK  &  CO. 
LONDON:  HUMPHREY  MILFORD 
OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

1920 


BOSTON  COLLEGB 

BUSINESS  ADMIN.  LIBRARY 


Copyright ,  1920,  by  Yale  University  Press 


PREFACE 


If  the  great  American  novel  is  ever  written,  I  haz¬ 
ard  the  guess  that  its  plot  will  be  woven  around  the 
theme  of  American  transportation,  for  that  has 
been  the  vital  factor  in  the  national  development  of 
the  United  States.  Every  problem  in  the  building 
of  the  Republic  has  been,  in  the  last  analysis,  a 
problem  in  transportation.  The  author  of  such  a 
novel  will  find  a  rich  fund  of  material  in  the  per¬ 
petual  rivalries  of  pack-horseman  and  wagoner,  of 
riverman  and  canal  boatman,  of  steamboat  pro¬ 
moter  and  railway  capitalist.  He  will  find  at  every 
point  the  old  jostling  and  challenging  the  new: 
pack-horsemen  demolishing  wagons  in  the  early 
days  of  the  Alleghany  traffic;  wagoners  deriding 
Clinton’s  Ditch;  angry  boatmen  anxious  to  ram  the 
paddle  wheels  of  Fulton’s  Clermont ,  which  threat¬ 
ened  their  monopoly.  Such  opposition  has  always 
been  an  incident  of  progress;  and  even  in  this  new 
country,  receptive  as  it  was  to  new  ideas,  the  Wash¬ 
ingtons,  the  Fitches,  the  Fultons,  the  Coopers,  and 


vm 


PREFACE 


the  Whitneys,  who  saw  visions  and  dreamed 
dreams,  all  had  to  face  scepticism  and  hostility 
from  those  whom  they  would  serve. 


Worcester,  Mass., 
June,  1919. 


A.  B.  H. 


CONTENTS 


I.  THE  MAN  WHO  CAUGHT  THE  VISION  Page  1 


II.  THE  RED  MAN’S  TRAIL  “  14 

III.  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  RIVERS  “  30 

IV.  A  NATION  ON  WHEELS  “  44 

V.  THE  FLATBOAT  AGE  “  62 

VI.  THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800  “  81 

VII.  THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT  “  100 

VIII.  THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES  “  116 

IX.  THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE  “  134 

X.  THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  “  154 

XI.  THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  “  174 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  “  197 

INDEX  “  203 


ix 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


A  CONESTOGA  WAGON 

Photograph  from  the  original  in  the  Na¬ 
tional  Museum,  Washington.  Frontispiece 

* 

TRANSPORTATION  ROUTES,  1784-1860  Facing  page  18 

A  FLATBOAT,  SUCH  AS  WAS  USED  ON  THE 
OHIO  AND  MISSISSIPPI  RIVERS,  SOME¬ 
TIMES  CALLED  AN  ARK,  A  VOITURE, 

OR  A  BROADHORN 

Engraving,  from  a  drawing  made  in  1796,  in 
Victor  Collot’s  Voyage  dans  V Amerique  Sep- 
tentrionale,  published  in  Paris,  1826.  In  the 
New  York  Public  Library.  '*  **  6%. 

MODEL  OF  JOHN  FITCH’S  STEAMBOAT, 

1797 

In  the  collection  of  the  New  York  Historical 

Society.  “  “  96 

ROBERT  FULTON’S  FIRST  STEAMBOAT 
Drawing  by  Richard  Varick  DeWitt.  In  the 
collection  of  the  New  York  Historical  Society. 

The  inscription  on  the  drawing  states  that 
the  upper  picture  represents  the  Clermont  as 
she  was  used  for  a  packet-boat  in  1807,  drawn 
from  personal  recollection  and  description  of 
persons  who  traveled  in  the  boat.  It  was 
about  100  feet  long,  propelled  by  a  cross-head 
bell-crank  engine  of  24  horse-power,  made  by 


xi 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Watt  and  Boulton.  During  the  next  winter 
the  vessel  was  enlarged  to  about  150  feet  in 
length  and  18  feet  in  width,  and  the  wheels 
were  placed  within  the  hull.  The  original 
engines  were  retained.  It  was  named  the 
North  River  of  Clermont,  and  its  appearance 
is  shown  in  the  lower  picture.  Accompany¬ 
ing  the  inscription  is  the  following  certifica¬ 
tion: 

“I,  Riley  Bartholomew,  for  some  time  an 
officer  of  the  Steamboat  North  River  of 
Clermont,  certify  the  above  to  be  a  correct 
representation  of  that  vessel. 

“Riley  Bartholomew. 

“Albany,  September,  1858.”  Facing  page  112 

THE  STEAMER  YELLOWSTONE,  ON  THE 
MISSOURI  RIVER 

The  first  vessel  that  successfully  navigated 
the  river;  built  and  operated  by  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Fur  Company.  Engraving  after  a  draw¬ 
ing  by  Charles  Bodmer,  in  Travels  in  the 
Interior  of  North  America.  In  the  New  York 
Public  Library.  “  “  176 


t 


THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  MAN  WHO  CAUGHT  THE  VISION 

Inland  America,  at  the  birth  of  the  Republic,  was 
as  great  a  mystery  to  the  average  dweller  on  the 
Atlantic  seaboard  as  the  elephant  was  to  the  blind 
men  of  Hindustan.  The  reports  of  those  who  had 
penetrated  this  wilderness  —  of  those  who  had  seen 
the  barren  ranges  of  the  Alleghanies,  the  fertile 
uplands  of  the  Unakas,  the  luxuriant  blue-grass 
regions,  the  rich  bottom  lands  of  the  Ohio  and 
Mississippi,  the  wide  shores  of  the  inland  seas,  or 
the  stretches  of  prairie  increasing  in  width  beyond 
the  Wabash  —  seemed  strangely  contradictory,  and 
no  one  had  been  able  to  patch  these  reports  to¬ 
gether  and  grasp  the  real  proportions  of  the  giant 
inland  empire  that  had  become  a  part  of  the  United 

States.  It  was  a  pathless  desert;  it  was  a  maze 

l 


2  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


of  trails,  trodden  out  by  deer,  buffalo,  and  Indian. 
Its  great  riverways  were  broad  avenues  for  voy¬ 
agers  and  explorers;  they  were  treacherous  gorges 
filled  with  the  plunder  of  a  million  floods.  It 
was  a  rich  soil,  a  land  of  plenty;  the  natives  were 
seldom  more  than  a  day  removed  from  starvation. 
Within  its  broad  confines  could  dwell  a  great  people ; 
but  it  was  as  inaccessible  as  the  interior  of  China. 
It  had  a  great  commercial  future;  yet  its  gigantic 
distances  and  natural  obstructions  defied  all  known 
means  of  transportation. 

Such  were  the  varied  and  contradictory  stories 
told  by  the  men  who  had  entered  the  portals  of  in¬ 
land  America.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that 
theories  and  prophecies  about  the  interior  were 
vague  and  conflicting  nor  that  most  of  the  schemes 
of  statesmen  and  financiers  for  the  development  of 
the  West  were  all  parts  and  no  whole.  They  all 
agreed  as  to  the  vast  richness  of  that  inland  realm 
and  took  for  granted  an  immense  commerce  therein 
that  was  certain  to  yield  enormous  profits.  In  far¬ 
away  Paris,  the  ingenious  diplomat,  Silas  Deane, 
writing  to  the  Secret  Committee  of  Congress  in 
1776,  pictured  the  Old  Northwest  —  bounded  by 
the  Ohio,  the  Alleghanies,  the  Great  Lakes,  and 
the  Mississippi  —  as  paying  the  whole  expense  of 


THE  MAN  WHO  CAUGHT  THE  VISION  3 


the  Revolutionary  War.1  Thomas  Paine  in  1780 
drew  specifications  for  a  State  of  from  twenty  to 
thirty  millions  of  acres  lying  west  of  Virginia  and 
south  of  the  Ohio  River,  the  sale  of  which  land 
would  pay  the  cost  of  three  years  of  the  war. 2  On 
the  other  hand,  Pelatiah  Webster,  patriotic  econo¬ 
mist  that  he  was,  decried  in  1781  all  schemes  to 
“pawn”  this  vast  westward  region;  he  likened  such 
plans  to  “killing  the  goose  that  laid  an  egg  every 
day,  in  order  to  tear  out  at  once  all  that  was  in 
her  belly.”  He  advocated  the  township  system 
of  compact  and  regular  settlement;  and  he  argued 
that  any  State  making  a  cession  of  land  would  reap 
great  benefit  “from  the  produce  and  trade”  of  the 
newly  created  settlements. 

There  were  mooted  many  other  schemes.  Gen¬ 
eral  Rufus  Putnam,  for  example,  advocated  the 


1  Deane’s  plan  was  to  grant  a  tract  two  hundred  miles  square  at  the 
junction  of  the  Ohio  and  the  Mississippi  to  a  company  on  the  con¬ 
dition  that  a  thousand  families  should  be  settled  on  it  within  seven 
years.  He  added  that,  as  this  company  would  be  in  a  great  degree 
commercial,  the  establishing  of  commerce  at  the  junction  of  those 
large  rivers  would  immediately  give  a  value  to  all  the  lands  situated 
on  or  near  them. 

2  Paine  thought  that  while  the  new  State  could  send  its  exports 
southward  down  the  Mississippi,  its  imports  must  necessarily  come 
from  the  East  through  Chesapeake  Bay  because  the  current  of  the 
Mississippi  was  too  strong  to  be  overcome  by  any  means  of  navigation 
then  known. 


4  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Pickering  or  “Army”  plan  of  occupying  the  West; 
he  wanted  a  fortified  line  to  the  Great  Lakes,  in 
case  of  war  with  England,  and  fortifications  on  the 
Ohio  and  the  Mississippi,  in  case  Spain  should 
interrupt  the  national  commerce  on  these  water¬ 
ways.  And  Thomas  Jefferson  theorized  in  his 
study  over  the  toy  states  of  Metropotamia  and 
Polypotamia  —  brought  his 

.  .  .  trees  and  houses  out 

And  planted  cities  all  about. 

But  it  remained  for  George  Washington,  the  Vir¬ 
ginia  planter,  to  catch,  in  something  of  its  actual 
grandeur,  the  vision  of  a  Republic  stretching  to¬ 
wards  the  setting  sun,  bound  and  unified  by  paths 
of  inland  commerce.  It  was  Washington  who  trav¬ 
ersed  the  long  ranges  of  the  Alleghanies,  slept  in 
the  snows  of  Deer  Park  with  no  covering  but  his 
greatcoat,  inquired  eagerly  of  trapper  and  trader 
and  herder  concerning  the  courses  of  the  Cheat,  the 
Monongahela,  and  the  Little  Kanawha,  and  who 
drew  from  these  personal  explorations  a  clear  and 
accurate  picture  of  the  future  trade  routes  by  which 
the  country  could  be  economically,  socially,  and 
nationally  united. 

Washington’s  experience  had  peculiarly  fitted 
him  to  catch  this  vision.  Fortune  had  turned  him 


THE  MAN  WHO  CAUGHT  THE  VISION  5 

westward  as  he  left  his  mother’s  knee.  First  as  a 
surveyor  for  Lord  Fairfax  in  the  Shenandoah  Val¬ 
ley  and  later,  under  Braddock  and  Forbes,  in  the 
armies  fighting  for  the  Ohio  against  the  French  he 
had  come  to  know  the  interior  as  it  was  known  by 
no  other  man  of  his  standing.  His  own  landed 
property  lay  largely  along  the  upper  Potomac  and 
in  and  beyond  the  Alleghanies.  Washington’s  in¬ 
terest  in  this  property  was  very  real.  Those  who 
attempt  to  explain  his  early  concern  with  the  West 
as  purely  altruistic  must  misread  his  numerous 
letters  and  diaries.  Nothing  in  his  unofficial  char¬ 
acter  shows  more  plainly  than  his  business  enter¬ 
prise  and  acumen.  On  one  occasion  he  wrote  to  his 
agent,  Crawford,  concerning  a  proposed  land  specu¬ 
lation:  “ I  recommend  that  you  keep  this  whole 
matter  a  secret  or  trust  it  only  to  those  in  whom 
you  can  confide.  If  the  scheme  I  am  now  propos¬ 
ing  to  you  were  known,  it  might  give  alarm  to 
others,  and  by  putting  them  on  a  plan  of  the  same 
nature,  before  we  could  lay  a  proper  foundation 
for  success  ourselves,  set  the  different  interests 
clashing  and  in  the  end  overturn  the  whole.”  Nor 
can  it  be  denied  that  Washington’s  attitude  to  the 
commercial  development  of  the  Wrest  was  char¬ 
acterized  in  his  early  days  by  a  narrow  colonial 


6  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


partisanship.  He  was  a  stout  Virginian;  and  all 
stout  Virginians  of  that  day  refused  to  admit  the 
pretensions  of  other  colonies  to  the  land  beyond 
the  mountains. 

But  from  no  man  could  the  shackles  of  self- 
interest  and  provincial  rivalry  drop  more  quickly 
than  they  dropped  from  Washington  when  he 
found  his  country  free  after  the  close  of  the  Revolu¬ 
tionary  War.  He  then  began  to  consider  how  that 
country  might  grow  and  prosper.  And  he  began 
to  preach  the  new  doctrine  of  expansion  and  unity. 
This  new  doctrine  first  appears  in  a  letter  which  he 
wrote  to  the  Marquis  de  Chastellux  in  1783,  after 
a  tour  from  his  camp  at  Newburg  into  central  New 
York,  where  he  had  explored  the  headwaters  of  the 
Mohawk  and  the  Susquehanna:  “I  could  not  help 
taking  a  more  extensive  view  of  the  vast  inland 
navigation  of  these  United  States  [the  letter  runs] 
and  could  not  but  be  struck  by  the  immense  extent 
and  importance  of  it,  and  of  the  goodness  of  that 
Providence  which  has  dealt  its  favors  to  us  with  so 
profuse  a  hand.  Would  to  God  we  may  have  wis¬ 
dom  enough  to  improve  them.  I  shall  not  rest  con¬ 
tented  till  I  have  explored  the  Western  country, 
and  traversed  those  lines,  or  great  part  of  them, 
which  have  given  bounds  to  a  new  empire.” 


THE  MAN  WHO  CAUGHT  THE  VISION  7 


“The  vast  inland  navigation  of  these  United 
States !”  It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  Washington 
should  have  had  his  first  glimpse  of  this  vision  from 
the  strategic  valley  of  the  Mohawk,  which  was  soon 
to  rival  his  beloved  Potomac  as  an  improved  com¬ 
mercial  route  from  the  seaboard  to  the  West,  and 
which  was  finally  to  achieve  an  unrivaled  superior¬ 
ity  in  the  days  of  the  Erie  Canal  and  the  Twentieth 
Century  Limited. 

We  may  understand  something  of  what  the  lure 
of  the  West  meant  to  Washington  when  we  learn 
that  in  order  to  carry  out  his  proposed  journey 
after  the  Revolution,  he  was  compelled  to  refuse 
urgent  invitations  to  visit  Europe  and  be  the  guest 
of  France.  “I  found  it  indispensably  necessary,” 
he  writes,  “to  visit  my  Landed  property  West  of 
the  Apalacheon  Mountains.  .  .  .  One  object  of 
my  journey  being  to  obtain  information  of  the 
nearest  and  best  communication  between  Eastern 
&  Western  waters:  &  to  facilitate  as  much  as  in  me 
lay  the  Inland  Navigation  of  the  Potomack.” 

On  September  1,  1784,  Washington  set  out  from 
Mount  Vernon  on  his  journey  to  the  West.  Even 
the  least  romantic  mind  must  feel  a  thrill  in  pictur¬ 
ing  this  solitary  horseman,  the  victor  of  Yorktown, 
threading  the  trails  of  the  Potomac,  passing  on  by 


8  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Cumberland  and  Fort  Necessity  and  Braddock’s 
grave  to  the  Monongahela.  The  man,  now  at  the 
height  of  his  fame,  is  retracing  the  trails  of  his  boy¬ 
hood  —  covering  ground  over  which  he  had  passed 
as  a  young  officer  in  the  last  English  and  French 
war  —  but  he  is  seeing  the  land  in  so  much  larger 
perspective  that,  although  his  diary  is  voluminous, 
the  reader  of  those  pages  would  not  know  that 
Washington  had  been  this  way  before.  Concern¬ 
ing  Great  Meadows,  where  he  first  saw  the  “  bright 
face  of  danger”  and  which  he  once  described  glee¬ 
fully  as  “a  charming  place  for  an  encounter,”  he 
now  significantly  remarks:  “The  upland,  East  of 
the  meadow,  is  good  for  grain.”  Changed  are  the 
ardent  dreams  that  filled  the  young  man’s  heart 
when  he  wrote  to  his  mother  from  this  region  that 
singing  bullets  “have  truly  a  charming  sound.” 
Today,  as  he  looks  upon  the  flow  of  Youghiogheny, 
he  sees  it  reaching  out  its  finger  tips  to  Potomac’s 
tributaries.  He  perceives  a  similar  movement  all 
along  the  chain  of  the  Alleghanies :  on  the  west  are 
the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Ohio,  and  reaching  out 
towards  them  from  the  east,  waiting  to  be  joined 
by  portage  road  and  canal,  are  the  Hudson,  the 
Susquehanna,  the  Potomac,  and  the  James.  He 
foresees  these  streams  bearing  to  the  Atlantic  ports 


THE  MAN  WHO  CAUGHT  THE  VISION  9 


the  golden  produce  of  the  interior  and  carrying 
back  to  the  interior  the  manufactured  goods  of 
the  seaboard.  He  foresees  the  Republic  becoming 
homogeneous,  rich,  and  happy.  “  Open  all  the  com¬ 
munication  which  nature  has  afforded,  ”  he  wrote 
Henry  Lee,  4 ‘between  the  Atlantic  States  and  the 
Western  territory,  and  encourage  the  use  of  them 

to  the  utmost  .  .  .  and  sure  I  am  there  is  no  other 

% 

tie  by  which  they  will  long  form  a  link  in  the  chain 
of  Federal  Union.” 

Crude  as  were  the  material  methods  by  which 
Washington  hoped  to  accomplish  this  end,  in  spirit 
he  saw  the  very  America  that  we  know  today;  and 
he  marked  out  accurately  the  actual  pathways  of 
inland  commerce  that  have  played  their  part  in  the 
making  of  America.  Taking  the  city  of  Detroit  as 
the  key  position,  commercially,  he  traced  the  main 
lines  of  internal  trade.  He  foresaw  New  York  im¬ 
proving  her  natural  line  of  communication  by  way 
of  the  Mohawk  and  the  Niagara  frontier  on  Lake 
Erie  —  the  present  line  of  the  Erie  Canal  and  the 
New  York  Central  Railway.  For  Pennsylvania, 
he  pointed  out  the  importance  of  linking  the  Schuyl¬ 
kill  and  the  Susquehanna  and  of  opening  the  two 
avenues  westward  to  Pittsburgh  and  to  Lake  Erie. 
In  general,  he  thus  forecast  the  Pennsylvania  Canal 


10  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


and  the  Pennsylvania  and  the  Erie  railways.  For 
Maryland  and  Virginia  he  indicated  the  Potomac 
route  as  the  nearest  for  all  the  trade  of  the  Ohio 
Valley,  with  the  route  by  way  of  the  James  and 
the  Great  Kanawha  as  an  alternative  for  the  settle¬ 
ments  on  the  lower  Ohio.  His  vision  here  was  real¬ 
ized  in  a  later  day  by  the  Potomac  and  the  Chesa¬ 
peake  and  Ohio  Canal,  the  Cumberland  Road,  the 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railway,  and  by  the  James- 
Kanawha  Turnpike  and  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio 
Railway. 

Washington’s  general  conclusions  are  stated  in  a 
summary  at  the  end  of  his  Journal ,  which  was  re¬ 
produced  in  his  classic  letter  to  Harrison,  written 
in  1784.  His  first  point  is  that  every  State  which 
had  water  routes  reaching  westward  could  enhance 
the  value  of  its  lands,  increase  its  commerce,  and 
quiet  the  democratic  turbulence  of  its  shut-in  pio¬ 
neer  communities  by  the  improvement  of  its  river 
transportation.  Taking  Pennsylvania  as  a  specific 
example,  he  declared  that  “  there  are  one  hundred 
thousand  souls  West  of  the  Laurel  Hill,  who  are 
groaning  under  the  inconveniences  of  a  long  land 
transportation.  ...  If  this  cannot  be  made  easy 
for  them  to  Philadelphia  .  .  .  they  will  seek  a 
mart  elsewhere.  .  .  .  An  opposition  on  the  part 


THE  MAN  WHO  CAUGHT  THE  VISION  11 


of  [that]  government  .  .  .  would  ultimately  bring 
on  a  separation  between  its  Eastern  and  Western 
settlements;  towards  which  there  is  not  wanting  a 
disposition  at  this  moment  in  that  part  of  it  beyond 
the  mountains.’’ 

Washington’s  second  proposal  was  the  achieve¬ 
ment  of  a  new  and  lasting  conquest  of  the  West  by 
binding  it  to  the  seaboard  with  chains  of  commerce. 
He  thus  states  his  point:  “No  well  informed  mind 
need  be  told  that  the  flanks  and  rear  of  the  United 
territory  are  possessed  by  other  powers,  and  for¬ 
midable  ones  too  —  nor  how  necessary  it  is  to  ap¬ 
ply  the  cement  of  interest  to  bind  all  parts  of  it 
together,  by  one  indissoluble  bond  —  particularly 
the  middle  States  with  the  Country  immediately 
back  of  them  —  for  what  ties  let  me  ask,  should  we 
have  upon  those  people;  and  how  entirely  uncon¬ 
nected  should  we  be  with  them  if  the  Spaniards  on 
their  right  or  Great  Britain  on  their  left,  instead  of 
throwing  stumbling  blocks  in  their  way  as  they  do 
now,  should  invite  their  trade  and  seek  alliances 
with  them?  ” 

Some  of  the  pictures  in  Washington’s  vision  re¬ 
veal,  in  the  light  of  subsequent  events,  an  almost 
uncanny  prescience.  He  very  plainly  prophesied 
the  international  rivalry  for  the  trade  of  the  Great 


12  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Lakes  zone,  embodied  today  in  the  Welland  and 
the  Erie  canals.  He  declared  the  possibility  of 
navigating  with  ocean-going  vessels  the  tortuous 
two-thousand-mile  channel  of  the  Ohio  and  the 
Mississippi  River;  and  within  sixteen  years  ships 
left  the  Ohio,  crossed  the  Atlantic,  and  sailed  into 
the  Mediterranean.  His  description  of  a  possible 
insurrection  of  a  western  community  might  well 
have  been  written  later;  it  might  almost  indeed  have 
made  a  page  of  his  diary  after  he  became  President 
of  the  United  States  and  during  the  Whiskey  In¬ 
surrection  in  western  Pennsylvania.  He  approved 
and  encouraged  Rumsey’s  mechanical  invention 
for  propelling  boats  against  the  stream,  showing 
that  he  had  a  glimpse  of  what  was  to  follow  after 
Fitch,  Rumsey,  and  Fulton  should  have  overcome 
the  mighty  currents  of  the  Hudson  and  the  Ohio 
with  the  steamboat’s  paddle  wheel.  His  proposal 
that  Congress  should  undertake  a  survey  of  west¬ 
ern  rivers  for  the  purpose  of  giving  people  at  large 
a  knowledge  of  their  possible  importance  as  avenues 
of  commerce  was  a  forecast  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark 
expedition  as  well  as  of  the  policy  of  the  Gov¬ 
ernment  today  for  the  improvement  of  the  great 
inland  rivers  and  harbors. 

“The  destinies  of  our  country  run  east  and  west. 


THE  MAN  WHO  CAUGHT  THE  VISION  13 


Intercourse  between  the  mighty  interior  west  and 
the  sea  coast  is  the  great  principle  of  our  commer¬ 
cial  prosperity.”  These  are  the  words  of  Edward 
Everett  in  advocating  the  Boston  and  Albany 
Railroad.  In  effect  Washington  had  uttered  those 
same  words  half  a  century  earlier  when  he  gave 
momentum  to  an  era  filled  with  energetic  but  un¬ 
successful  efforts  to  join  with  the  waters  of  the 
West  the  rivers  reaching  inland  from  the  Atlantic. 
The  fact  that  American  engineering  science  had 
not  in  his  day  reached  a  point  where  it  could  cope 
with  this  problem  successfully  should  in  no  wise 
lessen  our  admiration  for  the  man  who  had  thus 
caught  the  vision  of  a  nation  united  and  unified  by 
improved  methods  of  transportation. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  RED  MAN’S  TRAIL 

For  the  beginnings  of  the  paths  of  our  inland  com¬ 
merce,  we  must  look  far  back  into  the  dim  prehis¬ 
toric  ages  of  America.  The  earliest  routes  that 
threaded  the  continent  were  the  streams  and  the 
tracks  beaten  out  by  the  heavier  four-footed  ani¬ 
mals.  The  Indian  hunter  followed  the  migrations 
of  the  animals  and  the  streams  that  would  float  his 
light  canoe.  Today  the  main  lines  of  travel  and 
transportation  for  the  most  part  still  cling  to  these 
primeval  pathways. 

In  their  wanderings,  man  and  beast  alike  sought 

the  heights,  the  passes  that  pierced  the  mountain 

chains,  and  the  headwaters  of  navigable  rivers. 

On  the  ridges  the  forest  growth  was  lightest  and 

there  was  little  obstruction  from  fallen  timber;  rain 

and  frost  caused  least  damage  by  erosion;  and  the 

winds  swept  the  trails  clear  of  leaves  in  summer  and 

of  snow  in  winter.  Here  lay  the  easiest  paths  for 

14 


THE  RED  MAN’S  TRAIL 


15 


the  heavy,  blundering  buffalo  and  the  roving  elk 
and  moose  and  deer.  Here,  high  up  in  the  sun, 
where  the  outlook  was  unobstructed  and  signal  fires 
could  be  seen  from  every  direction,  on  the  longest 
watersheds,  curving  around  river  and  swamp,  ran 
the  earliest  travel  routes  of  the  aboriginal  inhabit¬ 
ants  and  of  their  successors,  the  red  men  of  historic 
times.  For  their  encampments  and  towns  these 
peoples  seem  to  have  preferred  the  more  sheltered 
ground  along  the  smaller  streams;  but,  when  they 
fared  abroad  to  hunt,  to  trade,  to  wage  war,  to  seek 
new  material  for  pipe  and  amulet,  they  followed  in 
the  main  the  highest  wTavs. 

If  in  imagination  one  surveys  the  eastern  half 
of  the  North  American  continent  from  one  of  the 
strategic  passageways  of  the  Alleghanies,  say  from 
Cumberland  Gap  or  from  above  Kittanning  Gorge, 
the  outstanding  feature  in  the  picture  will  be 
the  Appalachian  barrier  that  separates  the  interior 
from  the  Atlantic  coast.  To  the  north  lie  the 
Adirondacks  and  the  Berkshire  Hills,  hedging  New 
England  in  close  to  the  ocean.  Two  glittering 
waterways  lie  east  and  west  of  these  heights  —  the 
Connecticut  and  the  Hudson.  Upon  the  valleys 
of  these  two  rivers  converged  the  two  deeply  worn 
pathways  of  the  Puritan,  the  Old  Bay  Path 


16  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


and  the  Connecticut  Path.  By  way  of  Westfield 
River,  that  silver  tributary  which  joins  the  Con¬ 
necticut  at  Springfield,  Massachusetts,  the  Bay 
Path  surmounted  the  Berkshire  highlands  and 
united  old  Massachusetts  to  the  upper  Hudson 
Valley  near  Fort  Orange,  now  Albany. 

Here,  north  of  the  Catskills,  the  Appalachian 
barrier  subsides  and  gives  New  York  a  supreme  ad¬ 
vantage  over  all  the  other  Atlantic  States  —  a  level 
route  to  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  West.  The  Mo¬ 
hawk  River  threads  the  smiling  landscape;  beyond 
lies  the  “Finger  Lake  country”  and  the  valley  of 
the  Genesee.  Through  this  romantic  region  ran  the 
Mohawk  Trail,  sending  offshoots  to  Lake  Cham¬ 
plain  and  the  St.  Lawrence,  to  the  Susquehanna, 
and  to  the  Allegheny.  A  few  names  have  been 
altered  in  the  course  of  years  —  the  Bay  Path  is 
now  the  Boston  and  Albany  Railroad,  the  Mohawk 
Trail  is  the  New  York  Central,  and  Fort  Orange  is 
Albany  —  and  thus  we  may  tell  in  a  dozen  words 
the  story  of  three  centuries. 

Upon  Fort  Orange  converged  the  score  of  land 
and  water  pathways  of  the  fur  trade  of  our  North. 
These  Indian  trade  routes  were  slowly  widened  in¬ 
to  colonial  roads,  notably  the  Mohawk  and  Catskill 
turnpikes,  and  these  in  turn  were  transformed  into 


THE  RED  MAN'S  TRAIL 


17 


the  Erie,  Lehigh,  Nickel  Plate,  and  New  York  Cen¬ 
tral  railways.  But  from  the  day  when  the  canoe 
and  the  keel  boat  floated  their  bulky  cargoes  of  pelts 
or  the  heavy  laden  Indian  pony  trudged  the  trail,  the 
routes  of  trade  have  been  little  or  nothing  altered. 

Traversing  the  line  of  the  Alleghanies  south¬ 
ward,  the  eye  notes  first  the  break  in  the  wall  at  the 
Delaware  Water  Gap,  and  then  that  long  arm  of 
the  Susquehanna,  the  Juniata,  reaching  out  through 
dark  Kittanning  Gorge  to  its  silver  playmate,  the 
dancing  Conemaugh.  Here  amid  its  leafy  aisles 
ran  the  brown  and  red  Kittanning  Trail,  the  main 
route  of  the  Pennsylvania  traders  from  the  rich 
region  of  York,  Lancaster,  and  Chambersburg.  On 
this  general  alignment  the  Broadway  Limited  flies 
today  toward  Pittsburgh  and  Chicago.  A  little  to 
the  south  another  important  pathway  from  the 
same  region  led,  by  way  of  Carlisle,  Bedford,  and 
Ligonier,  to  the  Ohio.  The  “ Highland  Trail”  the 
Indian  traders  called  it,  for  it  kept  well  on  the 
watershed  dividing  the  Allegheny  tributaries  on  the 
north  from  those  of  the  Monongahela  on  the  south. 

Farther  to  the  south  the  scene  shows  a  change, 
for  the  Atlantic  plain  widens  considerably.  The 
Potomac  River,  the  James,  the  Pedee,  and  the 
Savannah  flow  through  valleys  much  longer  than 


18  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

those  of  the  northern  rivers.  Here  in  the  South 
commerce  was  carried  on  mainly  by  shallop  and 
pinnace.  The  trails  of  the  Indian  skirted  the 
rivers  and  offered  for  trader  and  explorer  passage¬ 
way  to  the  West,  especially  to  the  towns  of  the 
Cherokees  in  the  southern  Alleghanies  or  Unakas; 
but  the  waterways  and  the  roads  over  which  the 
hogsheads  of  tobacco  were  rolled  (hence  called 
“ rolling  roads”)  sufficed  for  the  needs  of  the  thin 
fringes  of  population  settled  along  the  rivers.  Trails 
from  Winchester  in  Virginia  and  Frederick  in 
Maryland  focused  on  Cumberland  at  the  head  of 
the  Potomac.  Beyond,  to  the  west,  the  finger  tips 
of  the  Potomac  interlocked  closely  with  the  Mo- 
nongahela  and  Youghioghenv,  and  through  this  net¬ 
work  of  mountain  and  river  valley,  by  the  “  Shades 
of  Death”  and  Great  Meadows,  coiled  Nemacolin’s 
Path  to  the  Ohio.  Even  today  this  ancient  route 
is  in  part  followed  by  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  and 
the  Western  Maryland  Railway. 

A  bird’s-eye  view  of  the  southern  Alleghanies 
shows  that,  while  the  Atlantic  plain  of  Virginia  and 
the  Carolinas  widens  out,  the  mountain  chains  in¬ 
crease  in  number,  fold  on  fold,  from  the  Blue  Ridge 
to  the  ragged  ranges  of  the  Cumberlands.  Few 
trails  led  across  this  manifold  barrier.  There  was 


TRANSPORTATION  ROUTES 

1784  -  1860 


PREPARED  FOR  THE  CHRONICLES  CF  AMERICA  UNDER  THE 
DIRECTION  OF  W.L.  6.  JOERG,  AMERICAN  GEOGRAPHICAL  SOCIETY 


Scale  1: 7,000.000 
10  0  20  4(1  60  80  ioo  Miles 


=  Main  wads  in  IS  16  ,  after  Melts  Its  Map  of  the 
United  States,  1:3,801,600,  of  that  date ) 

Canals  in  IS-tO  { after  Tanner's  Map  of  the  Canals 
and’ Railroads  of  the  United  Stales. 

/:  5,400,000,  of  that  dale.) 
-Railroads  in  IS. 50  faflerPL4.  Carnegie  Jnstn. 

Publ  215  f.  1917> 

JULIUS  BIEN  LITH.  N  Y 


' 


.....  *v 

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i  '  -v 


*  •  . 


■ 

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. 


i 


-  •■  -»»■ <  j.  «  . . . 


THE  RED  MAN’S  TRAIL 


19 


a  connection  at  Balcony  Falls  between  the  Janies 
River  and  the  Great  Kanawha;  but  as  a  trade 
route  it  was  of  no  such  value  to  the  men  of  its  day 
as  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio  system  over  the  same 
course  is  to  us.  As  in  the  North,  so  in  the  South, 
trade  avoided  obstacles  by  taking  a  roundabout, 
and  often  the  longest  route.  In  order  to  double  the 
extremity  of  the  Unakas,  for  instance,  the  trails 
reached  down  by  the  Valley  of  Virginia  and  New 
River  to  the  uplands  of  the  Tennessee,  and  here, 
near  Elizabethton,  they  met  the  trails  leading  up 
the  Broad  and  the  Yadkin  rivers  from  Charleston, 
South  Carolina. 

To  the  west  rise  the  somber  heights  of  Cumber¬ 
land  Gap.  Through  this  portal  ran  the  famous 
44 Warrior’s  Path,”  known  to  wandering  hunters, 
the  4 4 trail  of  iron”  from  Fort  Watauga  and  Fort 
Chiswell,  which  Daniel  Boone  widened  for  the  set¬ 
tlers  of  Kentucky.  To  the  southwest  lay  the  Blue 
Grass  region  of  Tennessee  with  its  various  trails  con¬ 
verging  on  Nashville  from  almost  every  direction. 
Today  the  Southern  Railway  enters  the  44  Sapphire 
Country,”  in  which  Asheville  lies,  by  practically 
the  same  route  as  the  old  Rutherfordton  Trail 
which  was  used  for  generations  by  red  man  and 
pioneer  from  the  Carolina  coast. 


20  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


In  our  entire  region  of  the  Appalachians,  from 
the  Berkshire  Hills  southward,  practically  every 
old-time  pathway  from  the  seaboard  to  the  trans- 
Alleghany  country  is  now  occupied  by  an  impor¬ 
tant  railway  system,  with  the  exception  of  the  War¬ 
rior’s  Trail  through  Cumberland  Gap  to  central 
Ohio  and  the  Highland  Trail  across  southern  Penn¬ 
sylvania.  And  even  Cumberland  Gap  is  accessible 
by  rail  today,  and  a  line  across  southern  Pennsyl¬ 
vania  was  once  planned  and  partially  constructed 
only  to  be  killed  by  jealous  rivals. 

These  numerous  keys  to  the  Alleghanies  were  a 
challenge  to  the  men  of  the  seaboard  to  seize  upon 
the  rich  trade  of  the  West  which  had  been  early 
monopolized  by  the  French  in  Canada.  But  the 
challenge  brought  its  difficult  problems.  What  land 
canoes  could  compete  with  the  flotillas  that  brought 
their  priceless  cargoes  of  furs  each  year  to  Montreal 
and  Quebec?  What  race  of  landlubbers  could  vie 
with  the  picturesque  bands  of  fearless  voyageurs 
who  sang  their  songs  on  the  Great  Lakes,  the  Ohio, 
the  Illinois,  and  the  Mississippi? 

In  the  solution  of  this  problem  of  diverting  trade 
probably  the  factor  of  greatest  importance,  next 
to  open  pathways  through  the  mountain  barriers, 
was  the  rich  stock-breeding  ground  lying  between 


THE  RED  MAN’S  TRAIL 


21 

the  Delaware  and  the  Susquehanna  rivers,  a  region 
occupied  by  the  settlers  familiarly  known  as  the 
Pennsylvania  Dutch.  In  this  famous  belt,  Tun¬ 
ing  from  Pennsylvania  into  Virginia,  originated  the 
historic  pack-horse  trade  with  the  “far  Indians” 
of  the  Ohio  Valley.  Here,  in  the  first  granary  of 
America,  Germans,  Scotch-Irish,  and  English  bred 
horses  worthy  of  the  name.  “Brave  fat  Horses  ”  an 
amazed  officer  under  Braddock  called  the  mounts 
of  five  Quakers  who  unexpectedly  rode  into  camp 
as  though  straight  “from  the  land  of  Goshen.” 
These  animals,  crossed  with  the  Indian  “pony” 
from  New  Spain,  produced  the  wise,  wiry,  and 
sturdy  pack-horse,  fit  to  transport  nearly  two  hun¬ 
dred  pounds  of  merchandise  across  the  rough  and 
narrow  Alleghany  trails.  This  animal  and  the  heavy 
Conestoga  horse  from  the  same  breeding  ground 
revolutionized  inland  commerce. 

The  first  American  cow  pony  was  not  without 
his  cowboy.  Though  the  drivers  were  not  all  of 
the  same  type  and  though  the  proprietors,  so 
to  speak,  of  the  trans-Alleghany  pack-horse  trade 
came  generally  from  the  older  settlements,  the  bulk 
of  the  hard  work  was  done  by  a  lusty  army  of  men 
not  reproduced  again  in  America  until  the  pictur¬ 
esque  figure  of  the  cow-puncher  appeared  above 


22  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

the  western  horizon.  This  breed  of  men  was  nur¬ 
tured  on  the  outer  confines  of  civilization,  along  the 
headwaters  of  the  Susquehanna,  the  Potomac,  the 
James,  and  the  Broad  —  the  country  of  the  “  Cow- 
pens.”  Rough  as  the  wilderness  they  occupied, 
made  strong  by  their  diet  of  meat  and  curds,  these 
Tatars  of  the  highlands  played  a  part  in  the  com¬ 
mercial  history  of  America  that  has  never  had  its 
historian.  In  their  knowledge  of  Indian  character, 
of  horse  and  packsaddle  lore,  of  the  forest  and  its 
trails  in  every  season,  these  men  of  the  Cowpens 
were  the  kings  of  the  old  frontier. 

An  officer  under  Braddock  has  left  us  one  of  the 
few  pictures  of  these  people1: 

From  the  Heart  of  the  Settlements  we  are  now  got 
into  the  Cow-pens;  the  Keepers  of  these  are  very  ex¬ 
traordinary  Kind  of  Fellows,  they  drive  up  their  Herds 
on  Horseback,  and  they  had  need  do  so,  for  their  Cattle 
are  near  as  wild  as  Deer;  a  Cow-pen  generally  consists 
of  a  very  large  Cottage  or  House  in  the  Woods,  with 
about  four-score  or  one  hundred  Acres,  inclosed  with 
high  Rails  and  divided;  a  small  Inclosure  they  keep  for 
Corn,  for  the  family,  the  rest  is  the  Pasture  in  which 
they  keep  their  calves;  but  the  Manner  is  far  different 
from  any  Thing  you  ever  saw;  they  may  perhaps  have 
a  Stock  of  four  or  five  hundred  to  a  thousand  Head  of 
Cattle  belonging  to  a  Cow-pen,  these  run  as  they  please 

1  Extracts  of  Letters  from  an  Officer  (London,  1755). 


THE  RED  MAN’S  TRAIL 


23 


in  the  Great  Woods,  where  there  are  no  Inclosures  to 
stop  them.  In  the  Month  of  March  the  Cows  begin 
to  drop  their  Calves,  then  the  Cow-pen  Master,  with 
all  his  Men,  rides  out  to  see  and  drive  up  the  Cows  with 
all  their  new  fallen  Calves;  they  being  weak  cannot  run 
away  so  as  to  escape,  therefore  are  easily  drove  up,  and 
the  Bulls  and  other  Cattle  follow  them;  and  they  put 
these  Calves  into  the  Pasture,  and  every  Morning  and 
Evening  suffer  the  Cows  to  come  and  suckle  them, 
which  done  they  let  the  Cows  out  into  the  great  Woods 
to  shift  for  their  Food  as  well  as  they  can;  whilst  the 
Calf  is  sucking  one  Tit  of  the  Cow,  the  Woman  of  the 
Cow-Pen  is  milking  one  of  the  other  Tits,  so  that  she 
steals  some  Milk  from  the  Cow,  who  thinks  she  is  giv¬ 
ing  it  to  the  Calf;  soon  as  the  Cow  begins  to  go  dry,  and 
the  Calf  grows  Strong,  they  mark  them,  if  they  are 
Males  they  cut  them,  and  let  them  go  into  the  Wood. 
Every  Year  in  September  and  October  they  drive  up 
the  Market  Steers,  that  are  fat  and  of  a  proper  Age, 
and  kill  them;  they  say  they  are  fat  in  October,  but  I 
am  sure  they  are  not  so  in  May,  June  and  July;  they 
reckon  that  out  of  100  Head  of  Cattle  they  can  kill 
about  10  or  12  steers,  and  four  or  five  Cows  a  Year;  so 
they  reckon  that  a  Cow-Pen  for  every  100  Head  of 
Cattle  brings  about  £40  Sterling  per  Year.  The 
Keepers  live  chiefly  upon  Milk,  for  out  of  their  Vast 
Herds,  they  do  condescend  to  tame  Cows  enough  to 
keep  their  Family  in  Milk,  Whey,  Curds,  Cheese  and 
Butter;  they  also  have  Flesh  in  Abundance  such  as  it 
is,  for  they  eat  the  old  Cows  and  lean  Calves  that  are 
like  to  die.  The  Cow-Pen  Men  are  hardy  People,  are 
almost  continually  on  Horseback,  being  obliged  to 
know  the  Haunts  of  their  Cattle. 


24  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

You  see,  Sir,  what  a  wild  set  of  Creatures  Our  Eng¬ 
lish  Men  grow  into,  when  they  lose  Society,  and  it  is 
surprising  to  think  how  many  Advantages  they  throw 
away,  which  our  industrious  Country-Men  would  be 
glad  of:  Out  of  many  hundred  Cows  they  will  not 
give  themselves  the  trouble  of  milking  more  than  will 
maintain  their  Family. 

With  such  a  race  of  born  horsemen,  every  whit 
as  bold  and  resourceful  as  the  voyageurs ,  to  bear 
the  brunt  of  a  new  era  of  transportation,  all  that 
was  needed  to  challenge  French  trade  beyond  the 
Alleghanies  was  competent  and  aggressive  leader¬ 
ship.  The  situation  called  for  men  of  means,  men 
of  daring,  men  closely  in  touch  with  governors  and 
assemblies  and  acquainted  with  the  web  of  poli¬ 
tics  that  was  being  spun  at  Philadelphia,  Williams¬ 
burg,  New  York,  London,  and  Paris.  Generations 
of  tenacious  struggle  along  the  American  frontier 
had  developed  such  men.  The  Weisers,  Croghans, 
Gists,  Washingtons,  Franklins,  Walkers,  and  Cre- 
saps  were  men  of  varied  descent  and  nationality. 
They  had  the  cunning,  the  boldness,  and  the  re¬ 
sources  to  undertake  successfully  the  task  of  con¬ 
quering  commercially  the  Great  West.  They  were 
the  first  men  of  the  colonies  to  be  unafraid  of  that 
bugbear  of  the  trader,  Distance.  We  may  aptly 
call  them  the  first  Americans  because,  though  not 


THE  RED  MAN’S  TRAIL 


25 


a  few  were  actually  born  abroad,  they  were  the  first 
whose  plans,  spirit,  and  very  life  were  dominated  by 
the  vision  of  an  America  of  continental  dimensions. 

The  long  story  of  French  and  English  rivalry  and 
of  the  war  which  ended  it  concerns  us  here  chiefly 
as  a  commercial  struggle.  The  French  at  Niagara 
(1749)  had  access  to  the  Ohio  by  way  of  Lake  Erie 
and  any  one  of  several  rivers — the  Allegheny,  the 
Muskingum,  the  Scioto,  or  the  Miami.  The  main 
routes  of  the  English  were  the  Nemacolin  and  Kit¬ 
tanning  paths.  The  French,  laboring  under  the  dis¬ 
advantages  of  the  longer  distance  over  which  their 
goods  had  to  be  transported  to  the  Indians  and  of 
the  higher  price  necessarily  demanded  for  them, 
had  to  meet  the  competition  of  the  traders  from 
the  rival  colonies  of  Pennsylvania  and  Virginia, 
each  of  them  jealous  of  and  underbidding  the  other. 

When  Celoron  de  Blainville  was  sent  to  the  Alle¬ 
gheny  in  1749,  by  the  Governor  of  New  France,  his 
message  was  that  “the  Governor  of  Canada  desired 
his  children  on  Ohio  to  turn  away  the  English  Trad¬ 
ers  from  amongst  them  and  discharge  them  from 
ever  coming  to  trade  there  again,  or  on  any  of  the 
Branches.”  He  sent  away  all  the  traders  whom  he 
found,  giving  them  letters  addressed  to  their  respec¬ 
tive  governors  denying  England’s  right  to  trade  in 


26  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


the  West.  To  offset  this  move,  within  two  years 
Pennsylvania  sent  goods  to  the  value  of  nine  hun¬ 
dred  pounds  in  order  to  hold  the  Indians  constant. 
The  Governor  had  already  ordered  the  traders  to 
sell  whiskey  to  the  Indians  at  “5  Bucks”  per  cask 
and  had  told  the  Indians,  through  his  agent  Con¬ 
rad  Weiser,  that  if  any  trader  refused  to  sell  the 
liquor  at  that  price  they  might  “take  it  from  him 
and  drink  it  for  nothing.”  There  was  but  one  way 
for  the  French  to  meet  such  competition.  Without 
delay  they  fortified  the  Allegheny  and  began  to 
coerce  the  natives.  Driving  away  the  carpenters 
of  the  Ohio  Company  from  the  present  site  of  Pitts¬ 
burgh,  they  built  Fort  Duquesne.  The  beginning 
of  the  Old  French  War  ended  what  we  may  call  the 
first  era  of  the  pack-horse  trade. 

The  capture  of  Fort  Duquesne  by  the  English 
army  under  General  Forbes  in  1758  and  the  final 
conquest  of  New  France  two  years  later  removed 
the  French  barrier  and  opened  the  way  to  ex¬ 
pansion  beyond  the  Alleghanies.  Thereafter  settle¬ 
ments  in  the  Monongahela  country  grew  apace. 
Pittsburgh,  Uniontown,  Morgantown,  Brownsville, 
Ligonier,  Greensburg,  Connellsville  —  we  give  the 
modern  names  —  became  centers  of  a  great  migra¬ 
tion  which  was  halted  only  for  a  season  by  Pontiac’s 


THE  RED  MAN’S  TRAIL  27 

Rebellion,  the  aftermath  of  the  French  War,  and 
was  resumed  immediately  on  the  suppression  of 
that  Indian  rising.  The  pack-horse  trade  now 
entered  its  final  and  most  important  era.  The 
earlier  period  was  one  in  which  the  trade  was  con¬ 
fined  chiefly  to  the  Indians;  the  later  phase  was 
concerned  with  supplying  the  needs  of  the  white 
man  in  his  rapidly  developing  frontier  settlements. 
Formerly  the  principal  articles- of  merchandise  for 
the  western  trade  were  guns,  ammunition,  knives, 
kettles,  and  tools  for  their  repair,  blankets,  tobacco, 
hatchets,  and  liquor.  In  the  new  era  every  known 
product  of  the  East  found  a  market  in  the  thriving 
communities  of  the  upper  Ohio.  As  time  went  on 
the  West  began  to  send  to  the  East,  in  addition  to 
skins  and  pelts,  whiskey  that  brought  a  dollar  a  gal¬ 
lon.  Each  pony  could  carry  sixteen  gallons  and 
every  drop  could  be  sold  for  real  money.  On  the 
return  trip  the  pack-horses  carried  back  chiefly  salt 
and  iron. 

Doddridge’s  Notes,  one  of  the  chief  sources  of 
our  information,  gives  this  lively  picture: 

In  the  fall  of  the  year,  after  seeding  time,  every 
family  formed  an  association  with  some  of  their  neigh¬ 
bors,  for  starting  the  little  caravan.  A  master  driver 
was  to  be  selected  from  among  them,  who  was  to  be 


28  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


assisted  by  one  or  more  young  men  and  sometimes  a 
boy  or  two.  The  horses  were  fitted  out  with  pack- 
saddles,  to  the  latter  part  of  which  was  fastened  a  pair 
of  hobbles  made  of  hickory  withes,  —  a  bell  and  collar 
ornamented  their  necks.  The  bags  provided  for  the 
conveyance  of  the  salt  were  filled  with  bread,  jerk, 
boiled  ham,  and  cheese  furnished  a  provision  for  the 
drivers.  At  night,  after  feeding,  the  horses,  whether 
put  in  pasture  or  turned  out  into  the  woods,  were 
hobbled  and  the  bells  were  opened.  The  barter  for 
salt  and  iron  was  made  first  at  Baltimore;  Frederick, 
Hagerstown,  Oldtown,  and  Fort  Cumberland,  in  suc¬ 
cession,  became  the  places  of  exchange.  Each  horse 
carried  two  bushels  of  alum  salt,  weighing  eighty-four 
pounds  to  the  bushel.  This,  to  be  sure,  was  not  a 
heavy  load  for  the  horses,  but  it  was  enough,  consider¬ 
ing  the  scanty  subsistence  allowed  them  on  the  jour¬ 
ney.  The  common  price  of  a  bushel  of  alum  salt,  at  an 
early  period,  was  a  good  cow  and  a  calf. 

Thus,  with  the  English  flag  afloat  at  Fort  Pitt, 
as  Duquesne  was  renamed  after  its  capture,  a  new 
day  dawned  for  the  great  region  to  the  West.  Be¬ 
yond  the  Alleghanies  and  as  far  as  the  Rockies, 
a  new  science  of  transportation  was  now  to  be 
learned  —  the  art  of  finding  the  dividing  ridge. 
Here  the  first  routes,  like  the  “Great  Trail”  from 
Pittsburgh  to  Detroit,  struck  out  with  an  assur¬ 
ance  that  is  in  marvelous  agreement  with  the  find¬ 
ings  of  the  surveyors  of  a  later  day.  The  railways, 


THE  RED  MAN’S  TRAIL 


29 


when  they  came,  found  the  valleys  and  penetrated 
with  their  tunnels  the  watersheds  from  the  heads 
of  the  streams  of  one  drainage  area  to  the  streams 
of  another.  Thus  on  the  Pennsylvania,  the  Balti- 
more  and  Ohio,  the  Southern,  the  Chesapeake  and 
Ohio,  and  other  railroads,  important  tunnels  are 
to  be  found  lying  immediately  under  the  Red 
Man’s  trail  which  clung  to  the  long  ascending 
slope  and  held  persistently  to  the  dividing  ridges. 

Even  this  necessarily  brief  survey  shows  plainly 
how  that  preeminently  American  institution,  the 
ridge  road,  came  about.  East  and  west,  it  was 
the  legitimate  and  natural  successor  to  the  ancient 
trail.  With  the  coming  of  the  wagon,  whose  rattle 
was  heard  among  the  hills  as  early  as  Braddock’s 
campaign,  the  process  of  lowering  these  paths  from 
the  heights  was  inevitably  begun,  and  it  was  to 
the  river  ways  that  men  first  looked  for  a  solu¬ 
tion  of  the  difficult  problems  of  inland  commerce. 
Eventually  the  paths  of  inland  commerce  consti¬ 
tuted  a  vast  network  of  canals,  roads,  and  railway 
lines  in  those  very  valleys  to  which  Washington 
had  called  the  nation’s  attention  in  1784. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  RIVERS 

It  would  perhaps  have  been  well,  in  the  light  of 
later  difficulties  and  failures,  if  the  men  who  at 
Washington’s  call  undertook  to  master  the  capri¬ 
cious  rivers  of  the  seaboard  had  studied  a  stately 
Spanish  decree  which  declared  that,  since  God  had 
not  made  the  rivers  of  Spain  navigable,  it  were 
sacrilege  for  mortals  to  attempt  to  do  so.  Even 
before  the  Revolution,  Mayor  Rhodes  of  Phila¬ 
delphia  was  in  correspondence  with  Franklin  in 
London  concerning  the  experiences  of  European  en¬ 
gineers  in  harnessing  foreign  streams.  That  sage 
philosopher,  writing  to  Rhodes  in  1772,  uttered  a 
clear  word  of  warning:  “rivers  are  ungovernable 
things,”  he  had  said,  and  English  engineers  “sel¬ 
dom  or  never  use  a  River  where  it  can  be  avoided.” 
But  it  was  the  birthright  of  New  World  democracy 
to  make  its  own  mistakes  and  in  so  doing  to  prove 
for  itself  the  errors  of  the  Old  World. 

30 


THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  RIVERS  31 


As  energetic  men  all  along  the  Atlantic  Plain 
now  took  up  the  problem  of  improving  the  inland 
rivers,  they  faced  a  storm  of  criticism  and  ridicule 
that  would  have  daunted  any  but  such  as  Washing¬ 
ton  and  Johnson  of  Virginia  or  White  and  Hazard 
of  Pennsylvania  or  Morris  and  Watson  of  New  York. 
Every  imaginable  objection  to  such  projects  was  ad¬ 
vanced  —  from  the  inefficiency  of  the  science  of  en¬ 
gineering  to  the  probable  destruction  of  all  the  fish 
in  the  streams.  In  spite  of  these  discouragements, 
however,  various  men  set  themselves  to  form  in 
rapid  succession  the  Potomac  Company  in  1785, 
the  Society  for  Promoting  the  Improvement  of  In¬ 
land  Navigation  in  1791,  the  Western  Inland  Lock 
Navigation  Company  in  1792,  and  the  Lehigh  Coal 
Mine  Company  in  1793.  A  brief  review  of  these 
various  enterprises  will  give  a  clear  if  not  a  com¬ 
plete  view  of  the  first  era  of  inland  water  commerce 
in  America. 

The  Potomac  Company,  authorized  in  1785  by 
the  legislatures  of  Maryland  and  Virginia,  received 
an  appropriation  of  $6666  from  each  State  for 
opening  a  road  from  the  headwaters  of  the  Potomac 
to  either  the  Cheat  or  the  Monongahela,  44  as  com¬ 
missioners  .  .  .  shall  find  most  convenient  and 
beneficial  to  the  Western  settlers.”  This  was  the 


32  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


only  public  aid  which  the  enterprise  received;  and 
the  stipulated  purpose  clearly  indicates  the  fact 
that,  in  the  minds  of  its  promoters,  the  transconti¬ 
nental  character  of  the  undertaking  appeared  to  be 
vital.  The  remainder  of  the  money  required  for 
the  work  was  raised  by  public  subscription  in  the 
principal  cities  of  the  two  States.  In  this  way 
£40,300  was  subscribed,  Virginia  men  taking  266 
shares  and  Maryland  men  137  shares.  The  stock¬ 
holders  elected  George  Washington  as  president 
of  the  company,  at  a  salary  of  thirty  shillings  a 
year,  with  four  directors  to  aid  him,  and  they  chose 
as  general  manager  James  Rumsey,  the  boat  mech¬ 
anician.  These  men  then  proceeded  to  attack  the 
chief  impediments  in  the  Potomac  —  the  Great 
Falls  above  Washington,  the  Seneca  Falls  at  the 
mouth  of  Seneca  Creek,  and  the  Shenandoah  Falls 
at  Harper’s  Ferry.  But,  as  they  had  difficulty  in 
obtaining  workmen  and  sufficient  liquor  to  cheer 
them  in  their  herculean  tasks,  they  made  such  slow 
progress  that  subscribers,  doubting  Washington’s 
optimistic  prophecy  that  the  stock  would  increase 
in  value  twenty  per  cent,  paid  their  assessments 
only  after  much  deliberation  or  not  at  all.  Thirty- 
six  years  later,  though  $729,380  had  been  spent  and 
lock  canals  had  been  opened  about  the  unnavigable 


THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  RIVERS  33 


stretches  of  the  Potomac  River,  a  commission  ap¬ 
pointed  to  examine  the  affairs  of  the  company  re¬ 
ported  “that  the  floods  and  freshets  nevertheless 
gave  the  only  navigation  that  was  enjoyed.”  As 
for  the  road  between  the  Potomac  and  the  Cheat 
or  the  Monongahela,  the  records  at  hand  do  not 
show  that  the  money  voted  for  that  enterprise  had 
been  used. 

The  Potomac  Company  nevertheless  had  accom¬ 
plished  something:  it  had  acquired  an  asset  of  the 
greatest  value  —  a  right  of  way  up  the  strategic 
Potomac  Valley;  and  it  had  furnished  an  object 
lesson  to  men  in  other  States  who  were  struggling 
with  a  similar  problem.  When,  as  will  soon  be 
apparent,  New  York  men  undertook  the  improve¬ 
ment  of  the  Mohawk  waterway  there  was  no  pat¬ 
tern  of  canal  construction  for  them  to  follow 
in  America  except  the  inadequate  wooden  locks 
erected  along  the  Potomac.  It  is  interesting  to 
know  that  Elkanah  Watson,  prominent  in  inland 
navigation  to  the  North,  went  down  from  New 
York  in  order  to  study  these  wooden  locks  and  that 
New  Yorkers  adopted  them  as  models,  though  they 
changed  the  material  to  brick  and  finally  to  stone. 

Pennsylvania  had  been  foremost  among  the  colo¬ 
nies  in  canal  building,  for  it  had  surveyed  as  early 


34  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

as  1762  the  first  lock  canal  in  America,  from  near 
Reading  on  the  Schuylkill  to  Middletown  on  the 
Susquehanna.  Work,  however,  had  to  be  sus¬ 
pended  when  Pontiac’s  Rebellion  threw  the  inland 
country  into  a  panic.  But  the  enterprise  of  Mary¬ 
land  and  Virginia  in  1785  in  developing  the  Poto¬ 
mac  aroused  the  Pennsylvanians  to  renewed  activ¬ 
ity.  The  Society  for  Promoting  the  Improvement 
of  Roads  and  Inland  Navigation  set  forth  a  pro¬ 
gramme  that  was  as  broad  as  the  Keystone  State 
itself.  Their  ultimate  ob  j  ect  was  to  capture  the  trade 
of  the  Great  Lakes.  “If  we  turn  our  view,”  read 
the  memorial  which  the  Society  presented  to  the 
Legislature,  “to  the  immense  territories  connected 
with  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  waters,  and  border¬ 
ing  on  the  Great  Lakes,  it  will  appear  .  .  .  that 
our  communication  with  those  vast  countries  (con¬ 
sidering  Fort  Pitt  as  the  port  of  entrance  upon 
them)  is  as  easy  and  may  be  rendered  as  cheap,  as 
to  any  other  port  on  the  Atlantic  tide  waters.” 

Pennsylvania,  lying  between  Virginia  and  New 
York,  occupied  a  peculiar  position.  Her  Susque¬ 
hanna  Valley  stretched  northwest  —  not  so  directly 
west  as  did  the  Potomac  on  the  south  and  the 
Mohawk  on  the  north.  This  more  northerly  trend 
led  these  early  Pennsylvania  promoters  to  believe 


THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  RIVERS 


35 


that,  while  they  might  “only  have  a  share  in 
the  trade  of  those  [the  Ohio]  waters,”  they  could 
absolutely  secure  for  themselves  the  trade  of  the 
Great  Lakes,  “taking  Presq’  Isle  [Erie,  Pennsyl¬ 
vania]  which  is  within  our  own  State,  as  the  great 
mart  or  place  of  embarkation.” 

The  plan  which  the  Society  proposed  involved  the 
improvement  of  water  and  land  routes  by  way  of  the 
Delaware  to  Lake  Ontario  and  Lake  Otsego,  and  of 
eight  routes  by  the  Susquehanna  drainage,  north, 
northwest,  and  west.  A  bill  which  passed  the  Legis¬ 
lature  on  April  13,  1791,  appropriated  money  for 
these  improvements.  Work  was  begun  immedi¬ 
ately  on  the  Schuylkill-Susquehanna  Canal,  but 
only  four  miles  had  been  completed  by  1794,  when 
the  Lancaster  Turnpike  directed  men’s  attention 
to  improved  highways  as  an  alternative  more  likely 
than  canals  to  provide  the  desired  facilities  for  in¬ 
land  transportation.  The  work  on  the  canal  was 
renewed,  however,  in  1821,  when  the  rival  Erie 
Canal  was  nearing  completion,  and  was  finished  in 
1827.  It  became  known  as  the  Union  Canal  and 
formed  a  link  in  the  Pennsylvania  canal  system, 
the  development  of  which  will  be  described  in  a 
later  chapter. 

In  New  York  State,  throughout  the  period  of  the 


36  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Old  French  and  the  Revolutionary  wars,  barges 
and  keel  boats  had  plied  the  Mohawk,  Wood  Creek, 
and  the  Oswego  to  Lake  Ontario.  Around  such 
obstructions  as  Cohoes  Falls,  Little  Falls,  and  the 
portage  at  Rome  to  Wood  Creek,  wagons,  sleds, 
and  pack-horses  had  transferred  the  cargoes.  To 
avoid  this  labor  and  delay  men  soon  conceived  of 
conquering  these  obstacles  by  locks  and  canals.  As 
early  as  1777  the  brilliant  Gouverneur  Morris  had 
a  vision  of  the  economic  development  of  his  State 
when  “the  waters  of  the  great  western  inland  seas 
would,  by  the  aid  of  man,  break  through  their 
barriers  and  mingle  with  those  of  the  Hudson.” 

Elkanah  Watson  was  in  many  ways  the  Wash¬ 
ington  of  New  York.  He  had  the  foresight,  pa¬ 
tience,  and  persistence  of  the  Virginia  planter.  His 
Journal  of  a  tour  up  the  Mohawk  in  1788  and  a 
pamphlet  which  he  published  in  1791  may  be  said 
to  be  the  ultimate  sources  in  any  history  of  the 
internal  commerce  of  New  York.  As  a  result,  a 
company  known  as  “The  President,  Directors,  and 
Company  of  the  Western  Inland  Lock  Navigation 
in  the  State  of  New  York,  ”  with  a  capital  stock  of 
$25,000,  was  authorized  by  act  of  legislature  in 
March,  1792,  and  the  State  subscribed  for  $12,500 
in  stock.  Many  singular  provisions  were  inserted 


THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  RIVERS  37 

in  this  charter,  but  none  more  remarkable  than  one 
which  stipulated  that  all  profits  over  fifteen  per 
cent  should  revert  to  the  State  Treasury.  This 
hint  concerning  surplus  profits,  however,  did  not 
cause  a  stampede  when  the  books  were  opened  for 
subscriptions  in  New  York  and  Albany.  In  later 
years,  when  the  Erie  Canal  gave  promise  of  a  new 

era  in  American  inland  commerce,  Elkanah  Wat- 

* 

son  recalled  with  a  grim  satisfaction  the  efforts  of 
these  early  days.  The  subscription  books  at  the 
old  Coffee  House  in  New  York,  he  tells  us,  lay  open 
three  days  without  an  entry,  and  at  Lewis’s  tavern 
in  Albany,  where  the  books  were  opened  for  a  simi¬ 
lar  period,  4 'no  mortal”  had  subscribed  for  more 
than  two  shares. 

The  system  proposed  for  the  improvement  of  the 
waterways  of  New  York  was  similar  to  that  pro¬ 
jected  for  the  Potomac.  A  canal  was  to  be  cut 
from  the  Mohawk  to  the  Hudson  in  order  to  avoid 
Cohoes  Falls;  a  canal  with  locks  would  overcome 
the  forty-foot  drop  at  Little  Falls;  another  canal 
over  five  thousand  feet  in  length  was  to  connect 
the  Mohawk  and  Wood  Creek  at  Rome;  minor  im¬ 
provements  were  to  be  made  between  Schenectady 
and  the  mouth  of  the  Schoharie;  and  finally  the 
Oswego  Falls  at  Rochester  were  to  be  circumvented 


38  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

also  by  canal.  All  the  objections,  difficulties,  and 
discouragements  which  had  attended  efforts  to  im¬ 
prove  waterways  elsewhere  in  America  confronted 
these  New  York  promoters.  They  began  in  1793 
at  Little  Falls  but  were  soon  forced  to  cease  owing 
to  the  failure  of  funds.  Under  the  encouraging 
spur  of  a  state  subscription  to  two  hundred  shares 
of  stock,  they  renewed  their  efforts  in  1794  but 
were  again  forced  to  abandon  the  work  before 
the  year  had  passed.  By  November,  1795,  how¬ 
ever,  they  had  completed  the  canal  and  in  thirty 
days  had  received  toll  to  the  amount  of  about  four 
hundred  dollars. 

The  total  actual  work  done  is  not  clearly  shown 
by  the  documents,  but  it  is  evident  that  the  measure 
of  success  achieved  was  not  equaled  elsewhere  on 
similar  improvements  on  a  large  scale.  From  1796 
to  1804  the  tolls  received  at  Rome  amounted  to 
over  fifteen  thousand  dollars,  and  at  Little  Falls 
to  over  fifty-eight  thousand  dollars  —  a  sum  which 
exceeded  the  original  cost  of  construction.  Divi¬ 
dends  had  crept  up  from  three  per  cent  in  1798  to 
five  and  a  half  per  cent  in  1817,  the  year  in  which 
work  was  begun  on  the  Erie  Canal. 

No  struggle  for  the  mastery  of  an  American 
river  matches  in  certain  respects  the  effort  of  the 


THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  RIVERS 


39 


Lehigh  Coal  and  Navigation  Company  to  bridle 
the  Lehigh  and  make  it  play  its  part  in  the  com¬ 
mercial  development  of  Pennsylvania.  The  fail¬ 
ures  and  trials  of  the  promoters  of  this  company 
were  no  less  remarkable  than  was  the  great  success 
that  eventually  crowned  the  effort.  In  1793  the 
Lehigh  Coal  Mine  Company  was  organized  and 
purchased  some  ten  thousand  acres  in  the  Mauch 
Chunk  anthracite  region,  nine  miles  from  the  Le¬ 
high  River.  It  then  appropriated  a  sum  of  money 
to  build  a  road  from  the  mines  to  the  river  in  the 
expectation  that  the  State  would  improve  the  navi¬ 
gation  of  the  waterway,  for  which,  it  has  already 
been  noted,  an  appropriation  had  been  made  in 
1791,  in  accordance  with  the  programme  of  the 
Society  for  Promoting  the  Improvement  of  Roads 
and  Inland  Navigation.  Nothing  was  done,  how¬ 
ever,  to  improve  the  river,  and  the  company,  after 
various  attempts  at  shipping  coal  to  Philadelphia, 
gave  up  the  effort  and  allowed  the  property,  which 
was  worth  millions,  to  lie  idle.  In  1807  the  Lehigh 
Coal  Mine  Company,  in  another  effort  to  get  its 
wares  before  the  public,  granted  to  Rowland  and 
Butland,  a  private  firm,  free  right  to  operate  one  of 
its  veins  of  coal;  but  this  operation  also  resulted  in 
failure.  In  1813  the  company  made  a  third  attempt 


40  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


and  granted  to  a  private  concern  a  lease  of  the 
entire  property  on  the  condition  that  ten  thou¬ 
sand  bushels  of  coal  should  be  taken  to  market 
annually.  Difficulties  immediately  made  them¬ 
selves  apparent.  No  contractor  could  be  found 
who  would  haul  the  output  to  the  Lehigh  River 
for  less  than  four  dollars  a  ton,  and  the  man  who 
accepted  those  terms  lost  money.  Of  five  barges 
filled  at  Mauch  Chunk  three  went  to  pieces  on  the 
way  to  Philadelphia.  Although  the  contents  of  the 
other  two  sold  for  twenty  dollars  a  ton,  the  pro¬ 
ceeds  failed  to  meet  expenses,  and  the  operating 
company  threw  up  the  lease. 

But  it  happened  that  White  and  Hazard,  the 
wire  manufacturers  who  purchased  this  Lehigh 
coal,  were  greatly  pleased  with  its  quality.  Be¬ 
lieving  that  coal  could  be  obtained  more  cheaply 
from  Mauch  Chunk  than  from  the  mines  along  the 
Schuylkill,  White,  Hauto,  and  Hazard  formed  a 
company,  entered  into  negotiation  with  the  owners 
of  the  Lehigh  mines,  and  obtained  the  lease  of  their 
properties  for  a  period  of  twenty  years  at  an  annual 
rental  of  one  ear  of  corn.  The  company  agreed, 
moreover,  to  ship  every  year  at  least  forty  thou¬ 
sand  bushels  of  coal  to  Philadelphia  for  its  own 
consumption,  to  prove  the  value  of  the  property. 


THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  RIVERS 


41 


White  and  his  partners  immediately  applied  to 
the  Legislature  for  permission  to  improve  the  navi¬ 
gation  of  the  Lehigh,  stating  the  purpose  of  the  im¬ 
provement  and  citing  the  fact  that  their  efforts 
would  tend  to  serve  as  a  model  for  the  improve¬ 
ment  of  other  Pennsylvania  streams.  The  desired 
opportunity  “to  ruin  themselves,”  as  one  member 
of  the  Legislature  put  it,  was  granted  by  an  act 
passed  March  20,  1818.  The  various  powers  ap¬ 
plied  for,  and  granted,  embraced  the  whole  range  of 
tried  and  untried  methods  for  securing  “a  naviga¬ 
tion  downward  once  in  three  days  for  boats  loaded 
with  one  hundred  barrels,  or  ten  tons.”  The  State 
kept  its  weather  eye  open  in  this  matter,  however, 
for  a  small  minority  felt  that  these  men  would  not 
ruin  themselves.  Accordingly,  the  act  of  grant 
reserved  to  the  commonwealth  the  right  to  compel 
the  adoption  of  a  complete  system  of  slack- water 
navigation  from  Easton  to  Stoddartsville  if  the 
service  given  by  the  company  did  not  meet  “the 
wants  of  the  country.”  , 

Capital  was  subscribed  by  a  patriotic  public  on 
condition  that  a  committee  of  stockholders  should 
go  over  the  ground  and  pass  judgment  on  the  prob¬ 
able  success  of  the  effort.  The  report  was  favor¬ 
able,  so  far  as  the  improvement  of  the  river  was 


42  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


concerned;  but  the  nine-mile  road  to  the  mines  was 
unanimously  voted  impracticable.  “To  give  you 
an  idea  of  the  country  over  which  the  road  is  to 
pass,”  wrote  one  of  the  commissioners,  “I  need 
only  tell  you  that  I  considered  it  quite  an  easement 
when  the  wheel  of  my  carriage  struck  a  stump  in¬ 
stead  of  a  stone.”  The  public  mind  was  divided. 
Some  held  that  the  attempt  to  operate  the  coal 
mine  was  farcical,  but  that  the  improvement  of 
the  Lehigh  River  was  an  undertaking  of  great  value 
and  of  probable  profit  to  investors.  Others  were 
just  as  positive  that  the  river  improvement  would 
follow  the  fate  of  so  many  similar  enterprises  but 
that  a  fortune  was  in  store  for  those  who  invested 
in  the  Lehigh  mines. 

The  direct  result  of  the  examiners’  report  and  of 
the  public  debate  it  provoked  was  the  organiza¬ 
tion  of  the  first  interlocking  companies  in  the  com¬ 
mercial  history  of  America.  The  Lehigh  Naviga¬ 
tion  Company  was  formed  with  a  capital  stock  of 
$150,000  and  the  Lehigh  Coal  Company  with  a 
capital  stock  of  $55,000.  This  incident  forms  one 
of  the  most  striking  illustrations  in  American  his¬ 
tory  of  the  dependence  of  a  commercial  venture 
upon  methods  of  inland  transportation.  The  Le¬ 
high  Navigation  Company  proceeded  to  build  its 


THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  RIVERS  43 


dams  and  walls  while  the  Lehigh  Coal  Company 
constructed  the  first  roadway  in  America  built  on 
the  principle  —  later  adopted  by  the  railways  —  of 
dividing  the  total  distance  by  the  total  descent  in 
order  to  determine  the  grade.  Not  to  be  outdone 
in  point  of  ingenuity,  the  Lehigh  Navigation  Com¬ 
pany,  then  suffering  from  an  unprecedented  dearth 
of  water,  adopted  White’s  invention  of  sluice  gates 
connecting  with  pools  which  could  be  filled  with 
reserve  water  to  be  drawn  upon  as  navigation  re¬ 
quired.  By  1819  the  necessary  depth  of  water 
between  Mauch  Chunk  and  Easton  was  obtained. 
The  two  companies  were  immediately  amalga¬ 
mated  under  the  title  of  the  Lehigh  Coal  and  Navi¬ 
gation  Company  and  by  1823  had  sent  over  two 
thousand  tons  of  coal  to  market. 

As  most  of  the  efforts  to  improve  the  rivers, 
however,  met  with  indifferent  success  and  many 
failures  were  recorded,  the  pendulum  of  public  con¬ 
fidence  in  this  aid  to  inland  commerce  swung  away, 
and  highway  improvement  by  means  of  stone  roads 
and  toll  road  companies  came  into  favor  in  the 
interval  between  the  nation’s  two  eras  of  river 
improvement  and  canal  building. 


t 


CHAPTER  IV 

A  NATION  ON  WHEELS 

In  early  days  the  Indian  had  not  only  followed  the 
watercourses  in  his  canoe  but  had  made  his  way 
on  foot  over  trails  through  the  woods  and  over 
the  mountains.  In  colonial  days,  Englishman  and 
Frenchman  followed  the  footsteps  of  the  Indian, 
and  as  settlement  increased  and  trade  developed, 
the  forest  path  widened  into  the  highway  for 
wheeled  vehicles.  Massachusetts  began  the  work 
of  road  making  in  1639  by  passing  an  act  which 
decreed  that  “the  ways”  should  be  six  to  ten  rods 
wide  “  in  common  grounds,”  thus  allowing  sufficient 
room  for  more  than  one  track.  Similar  broad 
“ways”  were  authorized  in  New  York  and  Penn¬ 
sylvania  in  1664;  stumps  and  shrubs  were  to  be  cut 
close  to  the  ground,  and  “sufficient  bridges”  were 
to  be  built  over  streams  and  marshy  places.  Vir¬ 
ginia  passed  legislation  for  highways  at  an  early 

date,  but  it  was  not  until  1662  that  strict  laws  were 

44 


A  NATION  ON  WHEELS 


45 


enacted  with  a  view  to  keeping  the  roads  in  a  per¬ 
manently  good  condition.  Under  these  laws  sur¬ 
veyors  were  appointed  to  establish  in  each  county 
roads  forty  feet  wide  to  the  church  and  to  the 
courthouse.  In  1700,  Pennsylvania  turned  her  lo¬ 
cal  roads  over  to  the  county  justices,  put  the  King’s 
highway  and  the  main  public  roads  under  the 
care  of  the  governor  and  his  council,  and  ordered 
each  county  to  erect  bridges  over  its  streams. 

The  word  “roadmaking”  was  capable  of  several 
interpretations.  In  general,  it  meant  outlining 
the  course  for  the  new  thoroughfare,  clearing  away 
fallen  timber,  blazing  or  notching  the  trees  so  that 
the  traveler  might  not  miss  the  track,  and  build¬ 
ing  bridges  or  laying  logs  “over  all  the  marshy, 
swampy,  and  difficult  dirty  places.” 

The  streams  proved  serious  obstacles  to  early 
traffic.  It  has  been  shown  already  that  the  earliest 
routes  of  animal  or  man  sought  the  watersheds;  the 
trails  therefore  usually  encountered  one  stream 
near  its  junction  with  another.  At  first,  of  course, 
fording  was  the  common  method  of  crossing  water, 
and  the  most  advantageous  fording  places  were  gen¬ 
erally  found  near  the  mouths  of  tributary  streams, 
where  bars  and  islands  are  frequently  formed  and 
where  the  water  is  consequently  shallow.  When 


46  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


ferries  began  to  be  used,  they  were  usually  situ¬ 
ated  just  above  or  below  the  fords;  but  when  the 
bridge  succeeded  the  ferry,  the  primitive  bridge 
builder  went  back  to  the  old  fording  place  in 
order  to  take  advantage  of  the  shallower  water, 
bars,  and  islands.  With  the  advent  of  improved 
engineering,  the  character  of  river  banks  and  cur¬ 
rents  was  more  frequently  taken  into  considera¬ 
tion  in  choosing  a  site  for  a  bridge  than  was  the 
case  in  the  olden  times,  but  despite  this  fact  the 
bridges  of  today,  generally  speaking,  span  the 
rivers  where  the  deer  or  the  buffalo  splashed  his 
way  across  centuries  ago. 

On  the  broader  streams,  where  fording  was  im¬ 
possible  and  traffic  was  perforce  carried  by  ferry, 
the  canoe  and  the  keel  boat  of  the  earliest  days 
gave  way  in  time  to  the  ordinary  “flat”  or  barge. 
At  first  the  obligation  of  the  ferryman  to  the  pub¬ 
lic,  though  recognized  by  English  law,  was  ignored 
in  America  by  legislators  and  monopolists  alike. 
Men  obtained  the  land  on  both  sides  of  the  rivers 
at  the  crossing  places  and  served  the  public  only 
at  their  own  convenience  and  at  their  own  charges. 
In  many  cases,  to  encourage  the  opening  of  roads 
or  of  ferries,  national  and  state  authorities  made 
grants  of  land  on  the  same  principle  followed  in 


A  NATION  ON  WHEELS 


47 


later  days  in  the  case  of  Western  railroads.  Such, 
for  instance,  was  the  grant  to  Ebenezer  Zane,  at 
Zanesville,  Lancaster,  and  Chillicothe  in  the 
Northwest  Territory.  These  monopolies  some¬ 
times  were  extremely  profitable:  a  descendant  of 
the  owners  of  the  famous  Ingles  ferry  across  New 
River,  on  the  Wilderness  Road  to  Kentucky,  is 

responsible  for  the  statement  that  in  the  heyday  of 

•» 

travel  to  the  Southwest  the  privilege  was  worth 
from  $10,000  to  $15,000  annually  to  the  family. 
But  as  local  governments  became  more  efficient, 
monopolies  were  abolished  and  the  collection  of 
tolls  was  taken  over  by  the  authorities.  The 
awakening  of  inland  trade  is  most  clearly  indi¬ 
cated  everywhere  by  the  action  of  assemblies  re¬ 
garding  the  operation  of  ferries,  and  in  general,  by 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  tolls  and 
ferries  were  being  regulated  by  law. 

But  neither  roads  nor  ferries  were  of  themselves 
sufficient  to  put  a  nation  on  wheels.  The  early 
polite  society  of  the  settled  neighborhoods  traveled 
in  horse  litters,  in  sedan  chairs,  or  on  horseback, 
the  women  seated  on  pillions  or  cushions  behind 
the  saddle  riders,  while  oxcarts  and  horse  barrows 
brought  to  town  the  produce  of  the  outlying  farms. 
Although  carts  and  rude  wagons  could  be  built 


48  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


entirely  of  wood,  there  could  be  no  marked  advance 
in  transportation  until  the  development  of  mining 
in  certain  localities  reduced  the  price  of  iron.  With 
the  increase  of  travel  and  trade,  the  old  world 
coach  and  chaise  and  wain  came  into  use,  and  iron 
for  tire  and  brace  became  an  imperative  necessity. 
The  connection  between  the  production  of  iron  and 
the  care  of  highways  was  recognized  by  legislation 
as  early  as  1732,  when  Maryland  excused  men  and 
slaves  in  the  ironworks  from  labor  on  the  public 
roads,  though  by  the  middle  of  the  century  owners 
of  ironworks  were  obliged  to  detail  one  man  out  of 
every  ten  in  their  employ  for  such  work. 

While  the  coastwise  trade  between  the  colonies 
was  still  preeminently  important  as  a  means  of 
transporting  commodities,  by  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century  the  land  routes  from  New  York 
to  New  England,  from  New  York  across  New 
Jersey  to  Philadelphia,  and  those  radiating  from 
Philadelphia  in  every  direction,  were  coming  into 
general  use.  The  date  of  the  opening  of  regular 
freight  traffic  between  New  York  and  Philadelphia 
is  set  by  the  reply  of  the  Governor  of  New  Jersey 
in  1707  to  a  protest  against  monopolies  granted 
on  one  of  the  old  widened  Indian  trails  between 
Burlington  and  Amboy.  “At  present/’  he  says, 


A  NATION  ON  WHEELS 


49 


“everybody  is  sure,  once  a  fortnight ,  to  have  an 
opportunity  of  sending  any  quantity  of  goods, 
great  or  small,  at  reasonable  rates,  without  being 
in  danger  of  imposition;  and  the  sending  of  this 
wagon  is  so  far  from  being  a  grievance  or  mo¬ 
nopoly,  that  by  this  means  and  no  other ,  a  trade  has 
been  carried  on  between  Philadelphia,  Burling¬ 
ton,  Amboy,  and  New  York,  which  was  never 
known  before.” 

The  long  Philadelphia  Road  from  the  Lancaster 
region  into  the  Valley  of  Virginia,  by  way  of  Wad- 
kins  on  the  Potomac,  was  used  by  German  and 
Irish  traders  probably  as  early  as  1700.  In  1728 
the  people  of  Maryland  were  petitioning  for  a  road 
from  the  ford  of  the  Monocacy  to  the  home  of 
Nathan  Wickham.  Four  years  later  Jost  Heydt, 
leading  an  immigrant  party  southward,  broke  open 
a  road  from  the  York  Barrens  toward  the  Potomac 
two  miles  above  Harper’s  Ferry.  This  avenue  — 
by  way  of  the  Berkeley,  Staunton,  Watauga,  and 
Greenbrier  regions  to  Tennessee  and  Kentucky 
—  was  the  longest  and  most  important  in  America 
during  the  Revolutionary  period.  The  Virginia 
Assembly  in  1779  appointed  commissioners  to  view 
this  route  and  to  report  on  the  advisability  of 
making  it  a  wagon  road  all  the  way  to  Kentucky. 


50  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


In  1795,  efforts  were  made  in  Kentucky  to  turn 
the  Wilderness  Trail  into  a  wagon  road,  and  in 
this  same  year  the  Kentucky  Legislature  passed 
an  act  making  the  route  from  Crab  Orchard  to 
Cumberland  Gap  a  wagon  road  thirty  feet  in  width. 

From  Pennsylvania  and  from  Virginia  commerce 
westward  bound  followed  in  the  main  the  army 
roads  hewn  out  by  Braddock  and  Forbes  in  their 
campaigns  against  Fort  Duquesne.  In  1755,  Brad- 
dock,  marching  from  Alexandria  by  way  of  Fort 
Cumberland,  had  opened  a  passage  for  his  artil¬ 
lery  and  wagons  to  Laurel  Hill,  near  Uniontown, 
Pennsylvania.  His  force  included  a  corps  of  sea¬ 
men  equipped  with  block  and  tackle  to  raise  and 
lower  his  wagons  in  the  steep  inclines  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies.  Three  years  later,  Forbes,  in  his  careful, 
dogged  campaign,  followed  a  more  northerly  route. 
Advancing  from  Philadelphia  and  Carlisle,  he 
established  Fort  Bedford  and  Fort  Ligonier  as 
bases  of  supply  and  broke  a  new  road  through 
the  interminable  forest  which  clothed  the  rugged 
mountain  ranges.  From  the  first  there  was  bitter 
rivalry  between  these  two  routes,  and  the  young 
Colonel  Washington  was  roundly  criticized  by  both 
Forbes  and  Bouquet,  his  second  in  command,  for 
his  partisan  effort  to  “ drive  me  down,”  as  Forbes 


A  NATION  ON  WHEELS 


51 


phrased  it,  into  the  Virginia  or  Braddock’s  Road. 
This  rivalry  between  the  two  routes  continued 
when  the  destruction  of  the  French  power  over  the 
roads  in  the  interior  threw  open  to  Pennsylvania 
and  her  southern  neighbors  alike  the  lucrative 
trade  of  the  Ohio  country. 

From  the  journals  of  the  time  may  be  caught  faint 
glimpses  of  the  toils  and  dangers  of  travel  through 
these  wild  hill  regions.  Let  the  traveler  of  today, 
as  he  follows  the  track  that  once  was  Braddock’s 
Road,  picture  the  scene  of  that  earlier  time  when,  in 
the  face  of  every  natural  obstacle,  the  army  toiled 
across  the  mountain  chains.  Where  the  earth  in 
yonder  ravine  is  whipped  to  a  black  froth,  the 
engineers  have  thrown  down  the  timber  cut  in 
widening  the  trail  and  have  constructed  a  corduroy 
bridge,  or  rather  a  loose  raft  on  a  sea  of  muck.  The 
wreck  of  the  last  wagon  which  tried  to  pass  gives 
some  additional  safety  to  the  next.  Already  the 
stench  from  the  horse  killed  in  the  accident  deadens 
the  heavy,  heated  air  of  the  forest.  The  sailors, 
stripped  to  the  waist,  are  ready  with  ropes  and 
tackle  to  let  the  next  wagon  down  the  incline;  the 
pulleys  creak,  the  ropes  groan.  The  horses,  weak 
and  terror-stricken,  plunge  and  rear;  in  the  final 
crash  to  the  level  the  leg  of  the  wheel  horse  is 


52  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

caught  and  broken;  one  of  the  soldiers  shoots  the 
animal;  the  traces  are  unbuckled;  another  beast 
is  substituted.  Beyond,  the  seamen  are  waiting 
with  tackle  attached  to  trees  on  the  ridge  above  to 
assist  the  horses  on  the  cruel  upgrade  —  and  Brad- 
dock,  the  deceived,  maligned,  misrepresented,  and 
misjudged,  creeps  onward  in  his  brave  conquest 
of  the  Alleghanies  in  a  campaign  that,  in  spite 
of  its  military  failure,  deserves  honorable  mention 
among  the  achievements  of  British  arms. 

Everywhere,  north  and  south,  the  early  American 
road  was  a  veritable  Slough  of  Despond.  Watery 
pits  were  to  be  encountered  wherein  horses  were 
drowned  and  loads  sank  from  sight.  Frequently 
traffic  was  stopped  for  hours  by  wagons  which 
had  broken  down  and  blocked  the  way.  Thirteen 
wagons  at  one  time  were  stalled  on  Logan’s  Hill  on 
the  York  Road.  Frightful  accidents  occurred  in 
attempting  to  draw  out  loads.  Jonathan  Tyson, 
for  instance,  in  1792,  near  Philadelphia  saw  a 
horse’s  lower  jaw  torn  off  by  the  slipping  of  a  chain. 
Save  in  the  winter,  when  in  the  northern  colonies 
snow  filled  the  ruts  and  frost  built  solid  bridges 
over  the  streams,  travel  on  these  early  roads  was 
never  safe,  rapid,  nor  comfortable.  The  compara¬ 
tive  ease  of  winter  travel  for  the  carriage  of  heavy 


A  NATION  ON  WHEELS 


53 


freight  and  for  purposes  of  trade  and  social  inter¬ 
course  gave  the  colder  regions  an  advantage  over 
the  southern  that  was  an  important  factor  in  the 
development  of  the  country. 

No  genuine  improvement  of  roads  and  highways 
seems  to  have  been  attempted  until  the  era  her¬ 
alded  by  Washington’s  letter  to  Harrison  in  1784. 
But  the  problem  slowly  forced  itself  upon  all  sec¬ 
tions  of  the  country,  and  especially  upon  Penn¬ 
sylvania  and  Maryland,  whose  inhabitants  began 
to  fear  lest  New  York,  Alexandria,  or  Richmond 
should  snatch  the  Western  trade  from  Philadelphia 
or  Baltimore.  The  truth  that  underlies  the  prov¬ 
erb  that  “history  repeats  itself”  is  well  illustrated 
by  the  fact  that  the  first  macadamized  road  in 
America  was  built  in  Pennsylvania,  for  here  also 
originated  the  pack-horse  trade  and  the  Conestoga 
horse  and  wagon;  here  the  first  inland  American 
canal  was  built,  the  first  roadbed  was  graded  on 
the  principle  of  dividing  the  whole  distance  by 
the  whole  descent,  and  the  first  railway  was  oper¬ 
ated.  Macadam  and  Telford  had  only  begun  to 
show  the  people  of  England  how  to  build  roads  of 
crushed  stone  —  an  art  first  developed  by  the  French 
engineer  Tresaguet  —  when  Pennsylvanians  built 
the  Lancaster  Turnpike.  The  Philadelphia  and 


54  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Lancaster  Turnpike  Road  Company  was  chartered 
April  9,  1792,  as  a  part  of  the  general  plan  of  the 
Society  for  the  Improvement  of  Roads  and  Inland 
Navigation  already  described.  This  road,  sixty-two 
miles  in  length,  was  built  of  stone  at  a  cost  of 
$465,000  and  was  completed  in  two  years.  Never 
before  had  such  a  sum  been  invested  in  internal  im¬ 
provement  in  the  United  States.  The  rapidity  with 
which  the  undertaking  was  carried  through  and  the 
profits  which  accrued  from  the  investment  were 
alike  astonishing.  The  subscription  books  were 
opened  at  eleven  o’clock  one  morning  and  by  mid¬ 
night  2226  shares  had  been  subscribed,  each  pur¬ 
chaser  paying  down  thirty  dollars.  At  the  same 
time  Elkanah  Watcon  was  despondently  scanning 
the  subscription  books  of  his  Mohawk  River  en¬ 
terprise  at  Albany  where  “no  mortal”  had  risked 
more  than  two  shares. 

The  success  of  the  Lancaster  Turnpike  was  not 
achieved  without  a  protest  against  the  monopoly 
which  the  new  venture  created.  It  is  true  that  in 
all  the  colonies  the  exercise  of  the  right  of  emi¬ 
nent  domain  had  been  conceded  in  a  veiled  way 
to  officials  to  whose  care  the  laying  out  of  roads 
had  been  delegated.  As  early  as  1639  the  General 
Court  of  Massachusetts  had  ordered  each  town  to 


A  NATION  ON  WHEELS 


55 


choose  men  who,  cooperating  with  men  from  the 
adjoining  town,  should  “lay  out  highways  where 
they  may  be  most  convenient,  notwithstanding  any 
man’s  property,  or  any  corne  ground,  so  as  it  occa¬ 
sion  not  the  pulling  down  of  any  man’s  house,  or 
laying  open  any  garden  or  orchard.”  But  the  open 
and  extended  exercise  of  these  rights  led  to  vigorous 
opposition  in  the  case  of  this  Pennsylvania  road. 
A  public  meeting  was  held  at  the  Prince  of  Wales 
Tavern  in  Philadelphia  in  1793  to  protest  in  round 
terms  against  the  monopolistic  character  of  the 
Lancaster  Turnpike.  Blackstone  and  Edward  III 
were  hurled  at  the  heads  of  the  “venal”  legislators 
who  had  made  this  “monstrosity”  possible.  The 
opposition  died  down,  however,  in  the  face  of  the 
success  which  the  new  road  instantly  achieved.  The 
Turnpike  was,  indeed,  admirably  situated.  Con¬ 
verging  at  the  quaint  old  “borough  of  Lancaster,” 
the  various  routes  —  northeast  from  Virginia,  east 
from  the  Carlisle  and  Chambersburg  region  and 
the  Alleghanies,  and  southeast  from  the  upper 
Susquehanna  country  —  poured  upon  the  Quaker 
City  a  trade  that  profited  every  merchant,  land¬ 
holder,  and  laborer.  The  nine  tollgates,  on  the 
average  a  little  less  than  seven  miles  apart, 
turned  in  a  revenue  that  allowed  the  “President 


56  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


and  Managers  ”  to  declare  dividends  to  stockholders 
running,  it  is  said,  as  high  as  fifteen  per  cent. 

The  Lancaster  Turnpike  is  interesting  from  three 
points  of  view :  it  began  a  new  period  of  American 
transportation;  it  ushered  in  an  era  of  speculation 
unheard  of  in  the  previous  history  of  the  country; 
and  it  introduced  American  lawmakers  to  the  great 
problem  of  controlling  public  corporations. 

Along  this  thirty-seven-foot  road,  of  which 
twenty-four  feet  were  laid  with  stone,  the  new  era 
of  American  inland  travel  progressed.  The  array 
of  two -wheeled  private  equipages  and  other  family 
carriages,  the  stagecoaches  of  bright  color,  and  the 
carts,  Dutch  wagons,  and  Conestogas,  gave  token 
of  what  was  soon  to  be  witnessed  on  the  great  roads 
of  a  dozen  States  in  the  next  generation.  Here, 
probably,  the  first  distinction  began  to  be  drawn 
between  the  taverns  for  passengers  and  those  pat¬ 
ronized  by  the  drivers  of  freight.  The  colonial 
taverns,  comparatively  few  and  far  between,  had 
up  to  this  time  served  the  traveling  public,  high 
and  low,  rich  and  poor,  alike.  But  in  this  new  era 
members  of  Congress  and  the  elite  of  Philadelphia 
and  neighboring  towns  were  not  to  be  jostled  at 
the  table  by  burly  hostlers,  drivers,  wagoners,  and 
hucksters.  Two  types  of  inns  thus  came  quickly 


A  NATION  ON  WHEELS 


57 


into  existence:  the  tavern  entertained  the  stage¬ 
coach  traffic,  while  the  democratic  roadhouse  served 
the  established  lines  of  Conestogas,  freighters,  and 
all  other  vehicles  which  poured  from  every  town, 
village,  and  hamlet  upon  the  great  thoroughfare 
leading  to  the  metropolis  on  the  Delaware. 

Among  American  inventions  the  Conestoga 
wagon  must  forever  be  remembered  with  respect. 
Originating  in  the  Lancaster  region  of  Pennsyl¬ 
vania  and  taking  its  name  either  from  the  horses  of 
the  Conestoga  Valley  or  from  the  valley  itself,  this 
vehicle  was  unlike  the  old  English  wain  or  the 
Dutch  wagon  because  of  the  curve  of  its  bed.  This 
peculiarly  shaped  bottom,  higher  by  twelve  inches 
or  more  at  each  end  than  in  the  middle,  made  the 
vehicle  a  safer  conveyance  across  the  mountains  and 
over  all  rough  country  than  the  old  straight-bed 
wagon.  The  Conestoga  was  covered  with  can¬ 
vas,  as  were  other  freight  vehicles,  but  the  lines  of 
the  bed  were  also  carried  out  in  the  framework 
above  and  gave  the  whole  the  effect  of  a  great  ship 
swaying  up  and  down  the  billowy  hills.  The 
wheels  of  the  Conestoga  were  heavily  built  and 
wore  tires  four  and  six  inches  in  width.  The  har¬ 
ness  of  the  six  horses  attached  to  the  wagon  was 
proportionately  heavy,  the  back  bands  being  fifteen 


58  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


inches  wide,  the  hip  straps  ten,  and  the  traces 
consisting  of  ponderous  iron  chains.  The  color  of 
the  original  Conestoga  wagons  never  varied:  the 
underbody  was  always  blue  and  the  upper  parts 
were  red.  The  wagoners  and  drivers  who  manned 
this  fleet  on  wheels  were  men  of  a  type  that  finds 
no  parallel  except  in  the  boatmen  on  the  western 
rivers  who  were  almost  their  contemporaries.  Fit 
for  the  severest  toil,  weathered  to  the  color  of  the 
red  man,  at  home  under  any  roof  that  harbored 
a  demijohn  and  a  fiddle,  these  hardy  nomads  of 
early  commerce  were  the  custodians  of  the  largest 
amount  of  traffic  in  their  day. 

The  turnpike  era  overlaps  the  period  of  the 
building  of  national  roads  and  canals  and  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  the  railway  age,  but  it  is  of  greatest  interest 
during  the  first  twenty-five  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  up  to  the  time  when  the  completion  of  the 
Erie  Canal  set  new  standards.  During  this  period 
roads  were  also  constructed  westward  from  Balti¬ 
more  and  Albany  to  connect,  as  the  Lancaster 
Turnpike  did  at  its  terminus,  with  the  thorough¬ 
fares  from  the  trans-Alleghany  country.  The  me¬ 
tropolis  of  Maryland  was  quickly  in  the  field  to 
challenge  the  bid  which  the  Quaker  City  made  for 
western  trade.  The  Baltimore-Reisterstown  and 


A  NATION  ON  WHEELS 


59 


Baltimore-Frederiek  turnpikes  were  built  at  a  cost 
of  $10,000  and  $8000  a  mile  respectively;  and 
the  latter,  connecting  with  roads  to  Cumberland, 
linked  itself  with  the  great  national  road  to  Ohio 
which  the  Government  built  between  1811  and 
1817.  These  famous  stone  roads  of  Maryland  long 
kept  Baltimore  in  the  lead  as  the  principal  outlet 
for  the  western  trade.  New  York,  too,  proved  her 
right  to  the  title  of  Empire  State  by  a  marvel¬ 
ous  activity  in  improving  her  magnificent  strategic 
position.  In  the  first  seven  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century  eighty-eight  incorporated  road  companies 
were  formed  with  a  total  capital  of  over  $8,000,000. 
Twenty  large  bridges  and  more  than  three  thou¬ 
sand  miles  of  turnpike  were  constructed.  The 
movement,  indeed,  extended  from  New  England  to 
Virginia  and  the  Carolinas,  and  turnpike  companies 
built  all  kinds  of  roads  —  earth,  corduroy,  plank, 
and  stone. 

In  many  cases  the  kind  of  road  to  be  constructed, 
the  tolls  to  be  charged,  and  the  amount  of  profit  to 
be  permitted,  were  laid  down  in  the  charters.  Thus 
new  problems  confronted  the  various  legislatures, 
and  interesting  principles  of  regulation  were  now 
established.  In  most  cases  companies  were  al¬ 
lowed,  on  producing  their  books  of  receipts  and 


60  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


expenditures,  to  increase  their  tolls  until  they  ob¬ 
tained  a  profit  of  six  per  cent  on  the  investment, 
though  in  a  number  of  cases  nine  per  cent  was  per¬ 
mitted.  When  revenues  increased  beyond  the  six 
per  cent  mark,  however,  the  tendency  was  to  re¬ 
duce  tolls  or  to  use  the  extra  profit  to  purchase  the 
stock  for  the  State,  with  the  expectation  of  ulti- 
mately  abolishing  tollgates  entirely.  The  theories 
of  state  regulation  of  corporations  and  the  obliga¬ 
tions  of  public  carriers,  extending  even  to  the  com¬ 
pensation  of  workmen  in  case  of  accident,  were 
developed  to  a  considerable  degree  in  this  turn¬ 
pike  era;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  principle 
of  permitting  fair  profit  to  corporations  upon 
public  examination  of  their  accounts  was  also 
recognized. 

The  stone  roads,  which  were  passable  at  all  sea¬ 
sons,  brought  a  new  era  in  correspondence  and 
business.  Lines  of  stages  and  wagons,  as  well 
known  at  that  time  as  are  the  great  railways  of 
today,  plied  the  new  thoroughfares,  provided  some 
of  the  comforts  of  travel,  and  assured  the  safer  and 
more  rapid  delivery  of  goods.  This  period  is  some¬ 
times  known  in  American  history  as  “The  Era  of 
Good  Feeling”  and  the  turnpike  contributed  in 
no  small  degree  to  make  the  phrase  applicable  not 


A  NATION  ON  WHEELS 


61 


only  to  the  domain  of  politics  but  to  all  the  relations 
of  social  and  commercial  life. 

While  road  building  in  the  East  gives  a  clear  pic¬ 
ture  of  the  rise  and  growth  of  commerce  and  trade 
in  that  section,  it  is  to  the  rivers  of  the  trans- 
Alleghany  country  that  we  must  look  for  a  corre¬ 
sponding  picture  in  this  early  period.  The  canoe 
and  pirogue  could  handle  the  packs  and  kegs 
brought  westward  by  the  files  of  Indian  ponies; 
but  the  heavy  loads  of  the  Conestoga  wagons  de¬ 
manded  stancher  craft.  The  flatboat  and  barge 
therefore  served  the  West  and  its  commerce  as  the 
Conestoga  and  turnpike  served  the  East. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  FLATBOAT  AGE 

In  the  early  twenties  of  the  last  century  one  of  the 
popular  songs  of  the  day  was  The  Hunters  of  Ken¬ 
tucky.  Written  by  Samuel  Woodworth,  the  author 
of  The  Old  Oaken  Bucket ,  it  had  originally  been 
printed  in  the  New  York  Mirror  but  had  come  into 
the  hands  of  an  actor  named  Ludlow,  who  was 
playing  in  the  old  French  theater  in  New  Orleans. 
The  poem  chants  the  praises  of  the  Kentucky  rifle¬ 
men  who  fought  with  Jackson  at  New  Orleans  and 
indubitably  proved 

That  every  man  was  half  a  horse 
And  half  an  alligator. 

Ludlow  knew  his  audience  and  he  saw  his  chance. 

Setting  the  words  to  Risk’s  tune.  Love  Laughs  at 

Locksmiths ,  donning  the  costume  of  a  Western 

riverman,  and  arming  himself  with  a  long  “squirrel” 

rifle,  he  presented  himself  before  the  house.  The 

62 


THE  FLATBOAT  AGE 


63 


rivermen  who  filled  the  pit  received  him,  it  is  re¬ 
lated,  with  “a  prolonged  whoop,  or  howl,  such  as 
Indians  give  when  they  are  especially  pleased.” 
And  to  these  sturdy  men  the  words  of  his  song 
made  a  strong  appeal: 

We  are  a  hardy,  freeborn  race, 

Each  man  to  fear  a  stranger; 

Whate’er  the  game,  we  join  in  chase, 
Despising  toil  and  danger; 

And  if  a  daring  foe  annoys. 

No  matter  what  his  force  is, 

We’ll  show  him  that  Kentucky  boys 
Are  Alligator-horses. 

The  title  “alligator-horse,”  of  which  Western 
rivermen  were  very  proud,  carried  with  it  a  sugges¬ 
tion  of  amphibious  strength  that  made  it  both  apt 
and  figuratively  accurate.  On  all  the  American 
rivers,  east  and  west,  a  lusty  crew,  collected  from 
the  waning  Indian  trade  and  the  disbanded  pioneer 
armies,  found  work  to  its  taste  in  poling  the  long 
keel  boats,  “cordelling”  the  bulky  barges  —  that 
is,  towing  them  by  pulling  on  a  line  attached  to 
the  shore  —  or  steering  the  “broadhorns”  or  flat- 
boats  that  transported  the  first  heavy  inland  river 
cargoes.  Like  longshoremen  of  all  ages,  the  Ameri¬ 
can  riverman  was  as  rough  as  the  work  which 


64  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

calloused  liis  hands  and  transformed  his  muscles 
into  bands  of  tempered  steel.  Like  all  men  given 
to  hard  but  intermittent  labor,  he  employed  his 
intervals  of  leisure  in  coarse  and  brutal  recreation. 
Their  roistering  exploits,  indeed,  have  made  these 
rivermen  almost  better  known  at  play  than  at 
work.  One  of  them,  the  notorious  Mike  Fink, 
known  as  “the  Snag”  on  the  Mississippi  and  as 
the  “Snapping  Turtle”  on  the  Ohio,  has  left  the 
record,  not  that  he  could  load  a  keel  boat  in  a  cer¬ 
tain  length  of  time,  or  lift  a  barrel  of  whiskey  with 
one  arm,  or  that  no  tumultuous  current  had  ever 
compelled  him  to  back  water,  but  that  he  could 
“out-run,  out-hop,  out-jump,  throw  down,  drag 
out,  and  lick  any  man  in  the  country,”  and  that 
he  was  “a  Salt  River  roarer.” 

Such  men  and  the  craft  they  handled  were 
known  on  the  Atlantic  rivers,  but  it  was  on  the 
Mississippi  and  its  branches,  especially  the  Ohio, 
that  they  played  their  most  important  part  in  the 
history  of  American  inland  commerce.  Before  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  wagons  and 
Conestogas  were  bringing  great  loads  of  merchan¬ 
dise  to  such  points  on  the  headwaters  as  Browms- 
ville,  Pittsburgh,  and  Wheeling.  As  early  as  1782, 
we  are  told,  Jacob  Yoder,  a  Pennsylvania  German, 


A  FLAT  BO  AT,  SUCH  AS  WAS  USED  ON  THE  OHIO  AND 
MISSISSIPPI  RIVERS,  SOMETIMES  CALLED 
AN  ARK,  A  VOITURE,  OR  A  BROADHORN 

Engraving,  from  a  drawing  made  in  1796,  in  Victor  Collot’s 
Voyage  dans  V Amerique  Septentrionale,  published  in  Paris,  1826. 
In  the  New  York  Public  Library. 


:,rv. 

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w 


THE  FLATBOAT  AGE 


65 


set  sail  from  the  Monongahela  country  with  the 
first  flatboat  to  descend  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi. 
As  the  years  passed,  the  number  of  such  craft  grew 
constantly  larger.  The  custom  of  fixing  the  wide- 
spreading  horns  of  cattle  on  the  prow  gave  these 
boats  the  alternative  name  of  “broadhorns,  ”  but 
no  accurate  classification  can  be  made  of  the  vari¬ 
ous  kinds  of  craft  engaged  in  this  vast  traffic. 

* 

Everything  that  would  float,  from  rough  rafts  to 
finished  barges,  was  commandeered  into  service, 
and  what  was  found  unsuitable  for  the  strenuous 
purposes  of  commercial  transportation  was  palmed 
off  whenever  possible  on  unsuspecting  emigrants 
en  route  to  the  lands  of  promise  beyond. 

Flour,  salt,  iron,  cider  and  peach  brandy  were 
staple  products  of  the  Ohio  country  which  the 
South  desired.  In  return  they  shipped  molasses, 
sugar,  coffee,  lead,  and  hides  upon  the  few  keel 
boats  which  crept  upstream  or  the  blundering 
barges  which  were  propelled  northward  by  means 
of  oar,  sail,  and  cordelle.  It  was  not,  however, 
until  the  nineteenth  century  that  the  young  West 
was  producing  any  considerable  quantity  of  manu¬ 
factured  goods.  Though  the  town  of  Pittsburgh 
had  been  laid  out  in  1764,  by  the  end  of  the  Revolu¬ 
tion  it  was  still  little  more  than  a  collection  of  huts 


5 


66  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

about  a  fort.  A  notable  amount  of  local  trade  was 
carried  on,  but  the  expense  of  transportation  was 
very  high  even  after  wagons  began  crossing  the 
Alleghanies.  For  example,  the  cost  from  Philadel¬ 
phia  and  Baltimore  was  given  by  Arthur  Lee,  a 
member  of  Congress,  in  1784  as  forty-five  shillings 
a  hundredweight,  and  a  few  months  later  it  is 
quoted  at  sixpence  a  pound  when  Johann  D. 
Schoph  crossed  the  mountains  in  a  chaise  —  a  feat 
4 ‘which  till  now  had  been  considered  quite  im¬ 
possible.”  Opinions  differed  widely  as  to  the  fu¬ 
ture  of  the  little  town  of  five  hundred  inhabitants. 
The  important  product  of  the  region  at  first  was 
Monongahela  flour  which  long  held  a  high  place 
in  the  New  Orleans  market.  Coal  was  being  mined 
as  early  as  1796  and  was  worth  locally  threepence 
halfpenny  a  bushel,  though  within  seven  years  it 
was  being  sold  at  Philadelphia  at  thirty-seven  and 
a  half  cents  a  bushel.  The  fur  trade  with  the 
Illinois  country  grew  less  important  as  the  century 
came  to  its  close,  but  Maynard  and  Morrison,  co¬ 
operating  with  Guy  Bryan  at  Philadelphia,  sent  a 
barge  laden  with  merchandise  to  Illinois  annually 
between  1790  and  1796,  which  returned  each  sea- 
'  son  with  a  cargo  of  skins  and  furs.  Pittsburgh 
was  thus  a  distributing  center  of  some  importance; 


THE  FLATBOAT  AGE 


67 


but  the  fact  that  no  drayman  or  warehouse  was 
to  be  found  in  the  town  at  this  time  is  a  signifi¬ 
cant  commentary  on  the  undeveloped  state  of  its 
commerce  and  manufacture. 

After  Wayne’s  victory  at  the  battle  of  the  Fallen 
Timber  in  1794  and  the  signing  of  the  Treaty  of. 
Greenville  in  1795,  which  ended  the  earlier  Indian 
wars  of  the  Old  Northwest  and  opened  for  settle¬ 
ment  the  country  beyond  the  Ohio,  a  great  migra¬ 
tion  followed  into  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Kentucky, 
and  the  commercial  activity  of  Pittsburgh  rapidly 
increased.  By  1800  a  score  of  profitable  industries 
had  arisen,  and  by  1803  the  first  bar-iron  foundry 
was,  to  quote  the  advertisement  of  its  owner, 
“ sufficiently  upheld  by  the  hand  of  the  Almighty” 
to  supply  in  part  the  demand  for  iron  and  castings. 
Glass  factories  were  established,  and  ropewalks, 
sail  lofts,  boatyards,  anchor  smithies,  and  brick¬ 
yards,  were  soon  ready  to  supply  the  rapidly  in¬ 
creasing  demands  of  the  infant  cities  and  the  coun¬ 
tryside  on  the  lower  Ohio.  When  the  new  century 
arrived  the  Pittsburgh  district  had  a  population 
of  upwards  of  two  thousand. 

One  by  one  the  other  important  centers  of  trade 
in  the  great  valley  beyond  began  to  show  evi¬ 
dences  of  life.  Marietta,  Ohio,  founded  in  1788  by 


68  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Revolutionary  officers  from  New  England,  became 
the  metropolis  of  the  rich  Muskingum  River  dis¬ 
trict,  which  was  presently  sending  many  flatboats 
southward.  Cincinnati  was  founded  in  the  same 
year  as  Marietta,  with  the  building  of  Fort  Wash¬ 
ington  and  the  formal  organization  of  Hamilton 
County.  The  soil  of  the  Miami  country  was  as 
“mellow  as  an  ash  heap”  and  in  the  first  four 
months  of  1802  over  four  thousand  barrels  of  flour 
were  shipped  southward  to  challenge  the  prestige 
of  the  Monongahela  product.  Potters,  bookmak¬ 
ers,  gunsmiths,  cotton  and  wool  weavers,  coopers, 
turners,  wheelwrights,  dyers,  printers,  and  rope- 
makers  were  at  work  here  within  the  next  dec¬ 
ade.  A  brewery  turned  out  five  thousand  bar¬ 
rels  of  beer  and  porter  in  1811,  and  by  the  next 
year  the  pork-packing  business  was  thoroughly 
established. 

Louisville,  the  “Little  Falls”  of  the  West,  was 
the  entrepbt  of  the  Blue  Grass  region.  It  had  been 
a  place  of  some  importance  since  Revolutionary 
days,  for  in  seasons  of  low  water  the  rapids  in  the 
Ohio  at  this  point  gave  employment  to  scores  of 
laborers  who  assisted  the  flatboatmen  in  hauling 
their  cargoes  around  the  obstruction  which  pre¬ 
vented  the  passage  of  the  heavily  loaded  barges. 


THE  FLATBOAT  AGE 


69 


The  town,  which  was  incorporated  in  1780,  soon 
showed  signs  of  commercial  activity.  It  was  the 
proud  possessor  of  a  drygoods  house  in  1783.  The 
growth  of  its  tobacco  industry  was  rapid  from  the 
first.  The  warehouses  were  under  government  su¬ 
pervision  and  inspection  as  early  as  1795,  and  in¬ 
numerable  flatboats  were  already  bearing  cargoes 
of  bright  leaf  southward  in  the  last  decade  of 
the  century.  The  first  brick  house  in  Louisville 
was  erected  in  1789  with  materials  brought  from 
Pittsburgh.  Yankees  soon  established  the  “Hope 
Distillery  and  the  manufacture  of  whiskey, 
which  had  long  been  a  staple  industry  conducted 
by  individuals,  became  an  incorporated  business 
of  great  promise  in  spite  of  objections  raised 
against  the  “creation  of  gigantic  reservoirs  of  this 
damning  drink.” 

Thus,  about  the  year  1800,  the  great  industries 
of  the  young  West  were  all  established  in  the  re¬ 
gions  dominated  by  the  growing  cities  of  Pitts¬ 
burgh,  Cincinnati,  and  Louisville.  But,  since  the 
combined  population  of  these  centers  could  not 
have  been  over  three  thousand  in  the  year  1800,  it 
is  evident  that  the  adjacent  rural  population  and 
the  people  living  in  every  neighboring  creek  and 
river  valley  were  chiefly  responsible  for  the  large 


70  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


trade  that  already  existed  between  this  corner  of 
the  Mississippi  basin  and  the  South. 

In  this  trade  the  riverman  was  the  fundamental 
factor.  Only  by  means  of  his  brawn  and  his  genius 
for  navigation  could  these  innumerable  tons  of 
flour,  tobacco,  and  bacon  have  been  kept  from 
rotting  on  the  shores.  Yet  the  man  himself  re¬ 
mains  a  legend  grotesque  and  mysterious,  one  of 
the  shadowy  figures  of  a  time  when  history  was 
being  made  too  rapidly  to  be  written.  If  we  ask 
how  he  loaded  his  flatboat  or  barge,  we  are  told 
that  “one  squint  of  his  eye  would  blister  a  bulks 
heel.  ”  When  we  inquire  how  he  found  the  channel 
amid  the  shifting  bars  and  floating  islands  of  that 
tortuous  two- thousand-mile  journey  to  New  Or¬ 
leans,  we  are  informed  that  he  was  “the  very  in¬ 
fant  that  turned  from  his  mother’s  breast  and 
called  out  for  a  bottle  of  old  rye.  ”  When  we  ask 
how  he  overcame  the  natural  difficulties  of  trade  — 
lack  of  commission  houses,  varying  standards  of 
money,  want  of  systems  of  credit  and  low  prices 
due  to  the  glutting  of  the  market  when  hundreds 
of  flatboats  arrived  in  the  South  simultaneously 
on  the  same  freshet  —  we  are  informed  that  “Billy 
Earthquake  is  the  geniwine,  double-acting  engine, 
and  can  out-run,  out-swim,  chaw  more  tobacco 


THE  FLATBOAT  AGE 


71 


and  spit  less,  drink  more  whiskey  and  keep  soberer 
than  any  other  man  in  these  localities.” 

The  reason  for  this  lack  of  information  is  that 
our  descriptions  of  flatboating  and  keel  boating 
are  written  by  travelers  who,  as  is  always  the  case, 
are  interested  in  what  is  unusual,  not  in  what  is 
typical  and  commonplace.  It  is  therefore  only 
dimly,  as  through  a  mist,  that  we  can  see  the  two 
lines  of  polemen  pass  from  the  prow  to  the  stern 
on  the  narrow  running-board  of  a  keel  boat,  lifting 
and  setting  their  poles  to  the  cry  of  steersman  or 
captain.  The  struggle  in  a  swift  “riffle”  or  rapid 
is  momentous.  If  the  craft  swerves,  all  is  lost. 
Shoulders  bend  with  savage  strength;  poles  quiver 
under  the  tension;  the  captain’s  voice  is  raucous, 
and  every  other  word  is  an  oath ;  a  pole  breaks,  and 
the  next  man,  though  half-dazed  in  the  mortal 
crisis,  does  for  a  few  moments  the  work  of  two.  At 
last  they  reach  the  head  of  the  rapid,  and  the  boat 
floats  out  on  the  placid  pool  above,  while  the 
“alligator-horse”  who  had  the  mishap  remarks  to 
the  scenery  at  large  that  he’d  be  “fly-blowed  be¬ 
fore  sun-down  to  a  certingty  ”  if  that  were  not  the 
very  pole  with  which  he  “pushed  the  broadhorn 
up  Salt  River  where  the  snags  were  so  thick  that  a 
fish  wouldn’t  swim  without  rubbing  his  scales  off.” 


72  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Audubon,  the  naturalist-merchant  of  the  Mis¬ 
sissippi,  has  left  us  a  clear  picture  of  the  process  by 
which  these  heavy  tubs,  loaded  with  forty  or  fifty 
tons  of  freight,  were  forced  upstream  against  a 
swift  current: 

Wherever  a  point  projected  so  as  to  render  the  course 
or  bend  below  it  of  some  magnitude,  there  was  an 
eddy,  the  returning  current  of  which  was  sometimes 
as  strong  as  that  of  the  middle  of  the  great  stream. 
The  bargemen,  therefore,  rowed  up  pretty  close  under 
the  bank  and  had  merely  to  keep  watch  in  the  bow 
lest  the  boat  should  run  against  a  planter  or  sawyer. 
But  the  boat  has  reached  the  point,  and  there  the 
current  is  to  all  appearance  of  double  strength  and 
right  against  it.  The  men,  who  have  rested  a  few 
minutes,  are  ordered  to  take  their  stations  and  lay 
hold  of  their  oars,  for  the  river  must  be  crossed,  it  being 
seldom  possible  to  double  such  a  point  and  proceed 
along  the  same  shore.  The  boat  is  crossing,  its  head 
slanting  to  the  current,  which  is,  however,  too  strong 
for  the  rowers,  and  when  the  other  side  of  the  river 
has  been  reached,  it  has  drifted  perhaps  a  quarter  of  a 
mile.  The  men  are  by  this  time  exhausted  and,  as  we 
shall  suppose  it  to  be  12  o’clock,  fasten  the  boat  to  a 
tree  on  the  shore.  A  small  glass  of  whiskey  is  given  to 
each,  when  they  cook  and  eat  their  dinner  and,  after 
resting  from  their  fatigue  for  an  hour,  recommence 
their  labors.  The  boat  is  again  seen  slowly  advancing 
against  the  stream.  It  has  reached  the  lower  end  of  a 
sandbar,  along  the  edge  of  which  it  is  propelled  by 


THE  FLATBOAT  AGE 


73 


means  of  long  poles,  if  the  bottom  be  hard.  Two 
men,  called  bowsmen,  remain  at  the  prow  to  assist,  in 
concert  with  the  steersman,  in  managing  the  boat  and 
keeping  its  head  right  against  the  current.  The  rest 
place  themselves  on  the  land  side  of  the  footway  of  the 
vessel,  put  one  end  of  their  poles  on  the  ground  and 
the  other  against  their  shoulders  and  push  with  all 
their  might.  As  each  of  the  men  reaches  the  stern,  he 
crosses  to  the  other  side,  runs  along  it  and  comes  again 
to  the  landward  side  of  the  bow,  when  he  recommences 
operations.  The  barge  in  the  meantime  is  ascending  at 
a  rate  not  exceeding  one  mile  in  the  hour. 


Trustworthy  statistics  as  to  the  amount  and  char¬ 
acter  of  the  Western  river  trade  have  never  been 
gathered.  They  are  to  be  found,  if  anywhere,  in 
the  reports  of  the  collectors  of  customs  located  at 
the  various  Western  ports  of  entry  and  departure. 
Nothing  indicates  more  definitely  the  hour  when 
the  West  awoke  to  its  first  era  of  big  business  than 
the  demand  for  the  creation  of  “districts”  and 
their  respective  ports,  for  by  no  other  means  could 
merchandise  and  produce  be  shipped  legally  to 
Spanish  territory  beyond  or  down  the  Mississippi 
or  to  English  territory  on  the  northern  shores  of 
the  Great  Lakes. 

Louisville  is  as  old  a  port  of  the  United  States 
as  New  York  or  Philadelphia,  having  been  so 


74  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


created  when  our  government  was  established  in 
1789,  but  oddly  enough  the  first  returns  to  the 
National  Treasury  (1798)  are  credited  to  the  port 
of  Palmyra,  Tennessee,  far  inland  on  the  Cumber¬ 
land  River.  In  1799  the  following  Western  towns 
were  made  ports  of  entry :  Erie,  Sandusky,  Detroit, 
Mackinaw  Island,  and  Columbia  (Cincinnati). 
The  first  port  on  the  Ohio  to  make  returns  was 
Fort  Massac,  Illinois,  and  it  is  from  the  collec¬ 
tor  at  this  point  that  we  get  our  first  hint  as  to 
the  character  and  volume  of  Western  river  traffic. 
In  the  spring  months  of  March,  April,  and  May, 
1800,  cargoes  to  the  value  of  £28,581,  Pennsylvania 
currency,  went  down  the  Ohio.  This  included 
22,714  barrels  of  flour,  1017  barrels  of  whiskey, 
12,500  pounds  of  pork,  18,710  pounds  of  bacon, 
75,814  pounds  of  cordage,  3650  yards  of  country 
linen,  700  bottles,  and  700  barrels  of  potatoes. 
In  the  three  autumn  months  of  1800,  for  instance, 
twenty-one  boats  ascended  the  Ohio  by  Fort 
Massac,  with  cargoes  amounting  to  36  hundred¬ 
weight  of  lead  and  a  few  hides.  Descending  the 
river  at  the  same  time,  flatboats  and  barges  carried 
245  hundredweight  of  drygoods  valued  at  $32,550. 
When  we  compare  these  spring  and  fall  records 
of  commerce  downstream  we  reach  the  natural 


THE  FLATBOAT  AGE 


75 


conclusion  that  the  bulk  of  the  drygoods  which  went 
down  in  the  fall  of  the  year  had  been  brought  over 
the  mountains  during  the  summer.  The  fact  that 
the  Alleghany  pack-horses  and  Conestogas  were 
transporting  freight  to  supply  the  Spanish  towns 
on  the  Mississippi  River  in  the  first  year  of  the 
nineteenth  century  seems  proved  beyond  a  doubt 
by  these  reports  from  Fort  Massac. 

The  most  interesting  phase  of  this  era  is  the 
connection  between  western  trade  and  the  politics 
of  the  Mississippi  Valley  which  led  up  to  the  Louisi¬ 
ana  Purchase.  By  the  Treaty  of  San  Lorenzo  in 
1795  Spain  made  New  Orleans  an  open  port,  and 
in  the  next  seven  years  the  young  West  made  the 
most  of  its  opportunity.  But  before  the  new  cen¬ 
tury  was  two  years  old  the  difficulties  encountered 
were  found  to  be  serious.  The  lack  of  commission 
merchants,  of  methods  of  credit,  of  information 
as  to  the  state  of  the  market,  all  combined  to 
handicap  trade  and  to  cause  loss.  Pittsburgh 
shippers  figured  their  loss  already  at  $60,000  a 
year.  In  consequence  men  began  to  look  elsewhere, 
and  an  advocate  of  big  business  wrote  in  1802: 
“The  country  has  received  a  shock;  let  us  imme¬ 
diately  extend  our  views  and  direct  our  efforts  to 
every  foreign  market/’ 


76  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


One  of  the  most  remarkable  plans  for  the  cap¬ 
ture  of  foreign  trade  to  be  found  in  the  annals 
of  American  commerce  originated  almost  simul¬ 
taneously  in  the  Muskingum  and  Monongahela 
regions.  With  a  view  to  making  the  American 
West  independent  of  the  Spanish  middlemen,  it 
was  proposed  to  build  ocean-going  vessels  on  the 
Ohio  that  should  carry  the  produce  of  the  interior 
down  the  Mississippi  and  thence  abroad  through 
the  open  port  of  New  Orleans.  The  idea  was 
typically  Western  in  its  arrogant  originality  and 
confident  self-assertion.  Two  vessels  were  built: 
the  brig  St.  Clair ,  of  110  tons,  at  Marietta,  and  the 
Monongahela  Farmer ,  of  250  tons,  at  Elizabeth  on 
the  Monongahela.  The  former  reached  Cincinnati 
April  27,  1801;  the  latter,  loaded  with  750  barrels 
of  flour,  passed  Pittsburgh  on  the  13th  of  May. 
Eventually,  the  St.  Clair  reached  Havana  and 
thus  proved  that  Muskingum  Valley  black  wal¬ 
nut,  Ohio  hemp,  and  Marietta  carpenters,  anchor 
smiths,  and  skippers  could  defy  the  grip  of  the 
Spaniard  on  the  Mississippi.  Other  vessels  fol¬ 
lowed  these  adventurers,  and  shipbuilding  imme¬ 
diately  became  an  important  industry  at  Pitts¬ 
burgh,  Marietta,  Cincinnati,  and  other  points.  The 
Duane  of  Pittsburgh  was  said  by  the  Liverpool 


THE  FLATBOAT  AGE 


77 


Saturday  Advertiser  of  July  9,  1803,  to  have  been 
the  “first  vessel  which  ever  came  to  Europe  from 
the  western  waters  of  the  United  States.”  Prob¬ 
ably  the  Louisiana  of  Marietta  went  as  far  afield 
as  any  of  the  one  hundred  odd  ships  built  in 
these  years  on  the  Ohio.  The  official  papers  of 
her  voyage  in  1805,  dated  at  New  Orleans,  Nor¬ 
folk  (Virginia),  Liverpool,  Messina,  and  Trieste 
at  the  head  of  the  Adriatic,  are  preserved  today 
in  the  Marietta  College  Library. 

The  growth  of  the  shipbuilding  industry  necessi¬ 
tated  a  readjustment  of  the  districts  for  the  collec¬ 
tion  of  customs.  Columbia  (Cincinnati)  at  first 
served  the  region  of  the  upper  Ohio;  but  in  1803 
the  district  was  divided  and  Marietta  was  made 
the  port  for  the  Pittsburgh-Portsmouth  section 
of  the  river.  In  1807  all  the  western  districts  were 
amalgamated,  and  Pittsburgh,  Charleston  (Wells- 
burg),  Marietta,  Cincinnati,  Louisville,  and  Fort 
Massac  were  made  ports  of  entry. 

The  Louisiana  Purchase  in  1803  gave  a  marked 
impulse  to  inland  shipbuilding;  but  the  embargo 
of  1807,  which  prohibited  foreign  trade,  following 
so  soon,  killed  the  shipyards,  which,  for  a  few 
years,  had  been  so  busy.  The  great  new  industry 
of  the  Ohio  Valley  was  ruined. 


78  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

By  this  time  the  successful  voyage  of  Fulton’s 
steamboat,  the  Clermont ,  between  New  York  and 
Albany,  had  demonstrated  the  possibilities  of 
steam  navigation.  Not  a  few  men  saw  in  the  novel 
craft  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  Western  river 
traffic;  but  many  doubted  whether  it  was  possible 
to  construct  a  vessel  powerful  enough  to  make  its 
way  upstream  against  such  sweeping  currents  as 
those  of  the  Mississippi  and  the  Ohio.  Surely  no 
one  for  a  moment  dreamed  that  in  hardly  more 
than  a  generation  the  Western  rivers  would  carry 
a  tonnage  larger  than  that  of  the  cities  of  the  At¬ 
lantic  seaboard  combined  and  larger  than  that  of 
Great  Britain! 

As  early  as  1805,  two  years  before  the  trip  of  the 
Clermont ,  Captain  Keever  built  a  ‘‘steamboat”  on 
the  Ohio,  and  sent  her  down  to  New  Orleans  where 
her  engine  was  to  be  installed.  But  it  was  not 
until  1811  that  the  Orleans ,  the  first  steamboat  to 
ply  the  Western  streams,  was  built  at  Pittsburgh, 
from  which  point  she  sailed  for  New  Orleans  in 
October  of  that  year.  The  Comet  and  Vesuvius 
quickly  followed,  but  all  three  entered  the  New 
Orleans-Natchez  trade  on  the  lower  river  and  were 
never  seen  again  at  the  headwaters.  As  yet  the 
swift  currents  and  flood  tides  of  the  great  river 


THE  FLATBOAT  AGE  79 

had  not  been  mastered.  It  is  true  that  in  1815  the 

\  ( 

Enterprise  had  made  two  trips  between  New  Or¬ 
leans  and  Louisville,  but  this  was  in  time  of  high 
water,  when  counter  currents  and  backwaters  had 
assisted  her  feeble  engine.  In  1816,  however, 
Henry  Shreve  conceived  the  idea  of  raising  the 
engine  out  of  the  hold  and  constructing  an  addi¬ 
tional  deck.  The  Washington,  the  first  double- 

■» 

decker,  was  the  result.  The  next  year  this  steam¬ 
boat  made  the  round  trip  from  Louisville  to  New 
Orleans  and  back  in  forty-one  days.  The  doubters 
were  now  convinced. 

For  a  little  while  the  quaint  and  original  river- 
man  held  on  in  the  new  age,  only  to  disappear 
entirely  when  the  colored  roustabout  became  the 
deckhand  of  post-bellum  days.  The  riverman  as  a 
type  was  unknown  except  on  the  larger  rivers  in 
the  earlier  years  of  water  traffic.  What  an  expe¬ 
rience  it  would  be  today  to  rouse  one  of  those  re¬ 
markable  individuals  from  his  dreaming,  as  Davy 
Crockett  did,  with  an  oar,  and  hear  him  howl 
“Halloe  stranger,  who  axed  you  to  crack  my 
lice?”  —  to  tell  him  in  his  own  lingo  to  “shut  his 
mouth  or  he  would  get  his  teeth  sunburnt  ”  —  to 
see  him  crook  his  neck  and  neigh  like  a  stallion  — 
to  answer  his  challenge  in  kind  with  a  flapping  of 


80  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

arms  and  a  cock’s  crow  —  to  go  to  shore  and  have 
a  scrimmage  such  as  was  never  known  on  a  grid¬ 
iron  —  and  then  to  resolve  with  Crockett,  during 
a  period  of  recuperation,  that  you  would  never 
“wake  up  a  ring-tailed  roarer  with  an  oar  again.” 

The  riverman,  his  art,  his  language,  his  traffic, 
seem  to  belong  to  days  as  distant  as  those  of 
which  Homer  sang. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800 

Foreign  travelers  who  have  come  to  the  United 
States  have  always  proved  of  great  interest  to 
Americans.  From  Rrissot  to  Arnold  Bennett, 
while  in  the  country  they  have  been  fed  and  clothed 
and  transported  wheresoever  they  would  go  —  at 
the  highest  prevailing  prices.  And  after  they  have 
left,  the  records  of  their  sojourn  that  these  travelers 
have  published  have  made  interesting  reading  for 
Americans  all  over  the  land.  Some  of  these  trans- 
Atlantic  visitors  have  been  jaundiced,  disgruntled, 
and  contemptuous;  others  have  shown  themselves 
of  an  open  nature,  discreet,  conscientious,  and 
fair-minded. 

One  of  the  most  amiable  and  clear-headed  of 

such  foreign  guests  was  Francis  Baily,  later  in  life 

president  of  the  Royal  Astronomical  Society  of 

Great  Britain,  but  at  the  time  of  his  American 

tour  a  young  man  of  twenty-two.  His  journey  in 
6  81 


82  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


1796-97  gave  him  a  wide  experience  of  stage,  flat- 
boat,  and  pack-horse  travel,  and  his  genial  disposi¬ 
tion,  his  observant  eye,  and  his  discriminating 
criticism,  together  with  his  comments  on  the  com¬ 
mercial  features  of  the  towns  and  regions  he  visited, 
make  his  record  particularly  interesting  and  valu¬ 
able  to  the  historian.1  Using  Baily ’s  journal  as  a 
guide,  therefore,  one  can  today  journey  with  him 
across  the  country  and  note  the  passing  show  as 
he  saw  it  in  this  transitional  period. 

Landing  at  Norfolk,  Virginia,  Baily  was  imme¬ 
diately  introduced  to  an  American  tavern.  Like 
most  travelers,  he  was  surprised  to  find  that  Ameri¬ 
can  taverns  were  “boarding-places,”  frequented 
by  crowds  of  “young,  able-bodied  men  who  seemed 
to  be  as  perfectly  at  leisure  as  the  loungers  of  an¬ 
cient  Europe.”  In  those  days  of  few  newspapers, 
the  tavern  everywhere  in  America  was  the  center 
of  information;  in  fact,  it  was  a  common  practice 
for  travelers  in  the  interior,  after  signing  their 
names  in  the  register,  to  add  on  the  same  page  any 
news  of  local  interest  which  they  brought  with 
them.  The  tavern  habitues,  Baily  remarks,  did 
not  sit  and  drink  after  meals  but  “  wasted  ”  their 

1  Journal  of  a  Tour  in  Unsettled  Parts  of  North  America  in  1796 
and  1797  by  the  late  Francis  Baily  (London,  1856). 


THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800 


83 


time  at  billiards  and  cards.  The  passion  for 
billiards  was  notorious,  and  taverns  in  the  most 
out-of-the-way  places,  though  they  lacked  the  most 
ordinary  conveniences,  were  nevertheless  provided 
with  billiard  tables.  This  custom  seems  to  have 
been  especially  true  in  the  South;  and  it  is  signifi¬ 
cant  that  the  first  taxes  in  T ennessee  levied  before 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  were  the 
poll  tax  and  taxes  on  billiard  tables  and  studhorses ! 

From  Norfolk  Baily  passed  northward  to  Balti¬ 
more,  paying  a  fare  of  ten  dollars,  and  from  there 
he  went  on  to  Philadelphia,  paying  six  dollars  more. 
On  the  way  his  stagecoach  stuck  fast  in  a  bog  and 
the  passengers  were  compelled  to  leave  it  until  the 
next  morning.  This  sixty-mile  road  out  of  Balti¬ 
more  was  evidently  one  of  the  worst  in  the  East. 
Ten  years  prior  to  this  date,  Brissot,  a  keen  French 
journalist,  mentions  the  great  ruts  in  its  heavy  clay 
soil,  the  overturned  trees  which  blocked  the  way, 
and  the  unexampled  skilfulness  of  the  stage  drivers. 
All  travelers  in  America,  though  differing  on  almost 
every  other  subject,  invariably  praise  the  ability 
of  these  sturdy,  weather-beaten  American  drivers, 
their  kindness  to  their  horses,  and  their  attention 
to  their  passengers.  Harriet  Martineau  stated 
that,  in  her  experience,  American  drivers  as  a  class 


84  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


were  marked  by  the  merciful  temper  which  accom¬ 
panies  genius,  and  their  perfection  in  their  art, 
their  fertility  of  resource,  and  the  gentleness  with 
which  they  treated  female  fears  and  fretfulness, 
were  exemplary. 

In  the  City  of  Brotherly  Love  Baily  notes  the 
geniality  of  the  people,  who  by  many  travelers 
are  called  aristocratic,  and  comments  on  Quaker 
opposition  to  the  theater  and  the  inconsequence 
of  the  Peale  Museum,  which  travelers  a  generation 
later  highly  praise.  Proceeding  to  New  York  at  a 
cost  of  six  dollars,  he  is  struck  by  the  uncouthness 
of  the  public  buildings,  churches  excepted,  the 
widespread  passion  for  music,  dancing,  and  the 
theater,  the  craze  for  sleighing,  and  the  promise 
which  the  harbor  gave  of  becoming  the  finest  in 
America.  Not  a  few  travelers  in  this  early  period 
gave  expression  to  their  belief  in  the  future  great¬ 
ness  of  New  York  City.  These  prophecies,  taken 
in  connection  with  the  investment  of  eight  millions 
of  dollars  which  New  Yorkers  made  in  toll-roads 
in  the  first  seven  years  of  this  new  century,  incline 
one  to  believe  that  the  influence  of  the  Erie  Canal 
as  a  factor  in  the  development  of  the  city  may  have 
been  unduly  emphasized,  great  though  it  was. 

From  New  York  Baily  returned  to  Baltimore 


THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800 


85 


and  went  on  to  Washington.  The  records  of  all 
travelers  to  the  site  of  the  new  national  capital 
give  much  the  same  picture  of  the  countryside.  It 
was  a  land  worn  out  by  tobacco  culture  and  vari¬ 
ously  described  as  “ dried  up,”  “run  down,”  and 
“hung  out  to  dry.”  Even  George  Washington,  at 
Mount  Vernon,  was  giving  up  tobacco  culture  and 
was  attempting  new  crops  by  a  system  of  rota¬ 
tion.  Cotton  was  being  grown  in  Maryland,  but 
little  care  was  given  to  its  culture  and  manufac¬ 
ture.  Tobacco  was  graded  in  Virginia  in  accord¬ 
ance  with  the  rigidity  of  its  inspection  at  Hanover 
Court  House,  Pittsburgh,  Richmond,  and  Cabin- 
Point  :  leaf  worth  sixteen  shillings  at  Richmond  was 
worth  twenty -one  at  Hanover  Court  House;  if  it 
was  refused  at  all  places,  it  was  smuggled  to  the 
West  Indies  or  consumed  in  the  country.  Mead¬ 
ows  were  rapidly  taking  the  place  of  tobacco- 
fields,  for  the  planters  preferred  to  clear  new  land 
rather  than  to  enrich  the  old. 

At  Washington  Baily  found  that  lots  to  the 
value  of  $278,000  had  been  sold,  although  only  one- 
half  of  the  proposed  city  had  been  “cleared.”  It 
was  to  be  forty  years  ere  travelers  could  speak 
respectfully  of  what  is  now  the  beautiful  city  of 
Washington.  In  these  earlier  days,  the  streets 


86  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


were  mudholes  divided  by  vacant  fields  and 
“beautified  by  trees,  swamps,  and  cows.” 

Departing  for  the  West  by  way  of  Frederick, 
Baily,  like  all  travelers,  was  intensely  interest¬ 
ed  upon  entering  the  rich  limestone  region  which 
stretched  from  Pennsylvania  far  down  into  Vir¬ 
ginia.  It  was  occupied  in  part  by  the  Pennsylvania 
Dutch  and  was  so  famous  for  its  rich  milk  that  it 
was  called  by  many  travelers  the  4 ‘Bonny clabber 
Country.  ”  Most  Englishmen  were  delighted  with 
this  region  because  they  found  here  the  good  old 
English  breed  of  horses,  that  is,  the  English  hunter 
developed  into  a  stout  coach-horse.  Of  native 
breeds,  Baily  found  animals  of  all  degrees  of 
strength  and  size  down  to  hackneys  of  fourteen 
hands,  as  well  as  the  “vile  dog-horses,”  or  pack- 
horses,  whose  faithful  service  to  the  frontier  could 
in  no  wise  be  appreciated  by  a  foreigner. 

This  region  of  Pennsylvania  was  as  noted  for 
its  wagons  as  for  its  horses.  It  was  this  wheat¬ 
bearing  belt  that  made  the  common  freight-wagon 
in  its  colors  of  red  and  blue  a  national  institution. 
It  was  in  this  region  of  rich,  well-watered  land  that 
the  maple  tree  gained  its  reputation.  Men  even 
prophesied  that  its  delightful  sap  would  prove  a 
cure  for  slavery,  for,  if  one  family  could  make 


THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800 


87 


fifteen  hundred  pounds  of  maple  sugar  in  a  season, 
eighty  thousand  families  could,  at  the  same  rate, 
equal  the  output  of  cane  sugar  each  year  from 
Santo  Domingo! 

The  traveler  at  the  beginning  of  the  century 
noticed  a  change  in  the  temper  of  the  people  as 
well  as  a  change  in  the  soil  when  the  Bonnyclabber 
Country  was  reached.  The  time-serving  attitude 
of  the  good  people  of  the  East  now  gave  place  to 
a  “consciousness  of  independence”  due,  Baily  re¬ 
marks,  to  the  fact  that  each  man  was  self-sufficient 
and  passed  his  life  “without  regard  to  the  smiles 
and  frowns  of  men  in  power.”  This  spirit  was 
handsomely  illustrated  in  the  case  of  one  burly 
Westerner  who  was  “churched”  for  fighting. 
Showing  a  surly  attitude  to  the  deacon- judges  who 
sat  on  his  case,  he  was  threatened  with  civil  prose¬ 
cution  and  imprisonment.  “I  don’t  want  free¬ 
dom,”  he  is  said  to  have  replied,  bitterly;  “I  don’t 
even  want  to  live  if  I  can’t  knock  down  a  man  who 
calls  me  a  liar.” 

Pushing  on  westward  by  way  of  historic  Sideling 
Hill  and  Bedford  to  Statlers,  Baily  found  here  a 
prosperous  millstone  quarry,  which  sold  its  stones 
at  from  fifteen  to  thirty  dollars  a  pair.  Twelve 
years  earlier  Washington  had  prophesied  that  the 


88  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

Alleghanies  would  soon  be  furnishing  millstones 
equal  to  the  best  English  burr.  As  he  crossed 
the  mountains  Baily  found  that  taverns  charged 
the  following  schedule:  breakfast,  eighteen  pence; 
dinner  and  supper  from  two  shillings  to  two  shil¬ 
lings  and  sixpence  each.  Traversing  Laurel  Hill, 
he  reached  Pittsburgh  just  at  the  time  when  it  was 
awakening  to  activity  as  the  trading  center  of 
the  West. 

In  order  to  descend  the  Ohio,  Baily  obtained  a 
flatboat,  thirty-six  feet  long  and  twelve  feet  broad, 
which  drew  eighteen  inches  of  water  and  was 
of  ten  tons  burden.  On  the  way  downstream. 
Charleston  and  Wheeling  were  the  principal  settle¬ 
ments  which  Baily  first  noted.  Ebenezer  Zane,  the 
founder  of  Wheeling,  had  just  opened  across  Ohio 
the  famous  landward  route  from  the  Monongahela 
country  to  Kentucky,  which  it  entered  at  Lime¬ 
stone,  the  present  Maysville.  This  famous  road, 
passing  through  Zanesville,  Lancaster,  and  Chilli- 
cothe,  though  at  that  time  safe  only  for  men  in 
parties,  was  a  common  route  to  and  from  Kentucky . 

On  such  inland  pathways  as  this,  early  travelers 
came  to  take  for  granted  a  hospitality  not  to  be 
found  on  more  frequented  thoroughfares.  In  this 
hospitality,  roughness  and  good  will,  cleanliness 


THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800 


89 


and  filth,  attempts  to  ape  the  style  of  Eastern 
towns  and  habits  of  the  most  primitive  kind,  were 
singularly  blended.  In  one  instance,  the  traveler 
might  be  cordially  assigned  by  the  landlord  to  a 
good  position  in  “the  first  rush  for  a  chance  at  the 
head  of  the  table”;  at  the  next  stopping  place  he 
might  be  coldly  turned  away  because  the  proprie¬ 
tor  “had  the  gout”  and  his  wife  the  “delicate 
blue-devils”;  farther  on,  where  “soap  was  un¬ 
known,  nothing  clean  but  birds,  nothing  indus¬ 
trious  but  pigs,  and  nothing  happy  but  squirrels,” 
Daniel  Boone’s  daughter  might  be  seen  in  high- 
heeled  shoes,  attended  by  white  servants  whose 
wages  were  a  dollar  a  week,  skirting  muddy  roads 
under  a  ten-dollar  bonnet  and  a  six-dollar  parasol. 
Or,  he  might  emerge  from  a  lonely  forest  in  Ohio 
or  Indiana  and  come  suddenly  upon  a  party  of 
neighbors  at  a  dreary  tavern,  enjoying  a  corn 
shucking  or  a  harvest  home.  Immediately  dubbed 
“Doctor,”  “Squire,”  or  “Colonel”  by  the  hos¬ 
pitable  merrymakers,  the  passer-by  would  be  in¬ 
formed  that  he  “should  drink  and  lack  no  good 
thing.”  After  he  had  retired,  as  likely  as  not  his 
quarters  would  be  invaded  at  one  or  two  o’clock 
in  the  morning  by  the  uproarious  company,  and 
the  best  refreshment  of  the  house  would  be  forced 


90  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


upon  him  with  a  hilarity  “created  by  omnipo¬ 
tent  whiskey.”  Sometimes,  however,  the  traveler 
would  encounter  pitiful  instances  of  loneliness  in 
the  wide-spreading  forests.  One  man  in  passing 
a  certain  isolated  cabin  was  implored  by  the  woman 
who  inhabited  it  to  rest  awhile  and  talk,  since  she 
was,  she  confessed,  completely  overwhelmed  by 
“the  lone!” 

Every  traveler  has  remarked  upon  the  yellow 
pallor  of  the  first  inhabitants  of  the  western  forests 
and  doubtless  correctly  attributed  this  sickly  ap¬ 
pearance  to  the  effects  of  malaria  and  miasma. 
The  psychic  influences  of  the  forest  wilderness  also 
weighed  heavily  upon  the  spirits  of  the  settlers, 
although,  as  Baily  notes,  it  was  the  newcomers 
who  felt  the  depression  to  an  exaggerated  degree. 
As  he  says: 

It  is  a  feeling  of  confinement,  which  begins  to  damp 
the  spirits,  from  this  complete  exclusion  of  distant  ob¬ 
jects.  To  travel  day  after  day,  among  trees  of  a  hun¬ 
dred  feet  high,  is  oppressive  to  a  degree  which  those 
cannot  conceive  who  have  not  experienced  it;  and  it 
must  depress  the  spirits  of  the  solitary  settler  to  pass 
years  in  this  state.  His  visible  horizon  extends  no 
farther  than  the  tops  of  the  trees  which  bound  his 
plantation  —  perhaps  five  hundred  yards.  Upwards 
he  sees  the  sun,  and  sky,  and  stars,  but  around  him  an 


l 


THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800 


91 


eternal  forest,  from  which  he  can  never  hope  to  emerge: 
—  not  so  in  a  thickly  settled  district;  he  cannot  there 
enjoy  any  freedom  of  prospect,  yet  there  is  variety, 
and  some  scope  for  the  imprisoned  vision.  In  a  hilly 
country  a  little  more  range  of  view  may  occasion¬ 
ally  be  obtained;  and  a  river  is  a  stream  of  light  as 
well  as  of  water,  which  feasts  the  eye  with  a  delight 
inconceivable  to  the  inhabitants  of  open  countries. 

In  direct  contradiction  to  this  longing  for  soci¬ 
ety  was  the  passion  which  the  first  generation  of 
pioneers  had  for  the  wilderness.  When  the  popu¬ 
lation  of  one  settlement  became  too  thick,  they 
were  seized  by  an  irresistible  impulse  to  “follow 
the  migration,”  as  the  expression  went.  The  easy 
independence  of  the  first  hunter-agriculturalist 
was  upset  by  the  advance  of  immigration.  His 
range  was  curtailed,  his  freedom  limited.  His 
very  breath  seems  to  have  become  difficult.  So 
he  sold  out  at  a  phenomenal  profit,  put  out  his  fire, 
shouldered  his  gun,  called  his  dog,  and  set  off  again 
in  search  of  the  solitude  he  craved. 

Severe  winter  weather  overtook  Baily  as  he  de¬ 
scended  the  Ohio  River,  until  below  Grave  Creek 
floating  ice  wrecked  his  boat  and  drove  him  ashore. 
Here  in  the  primeval  forest,  far  from  “Merrie 
England,”  Baily  spent  the  Christmas  of  1796  in 
building  a  new  flatboat.  This  task  completed,  he 


92  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


resumed  liis  journey.  Passing  Marietta,  where  the 
bad  condition  of  the  winter  roads  prevented  a  visit 
to  a  famous  Indian  mound,  he  reached  Limestone. 
In  due  time  he  sighted  Columbia,  the  metropolis 
of  the  Miami  country.  According  to  Baily,  the 
sale  of  European  goods  in  this  part  of  the  Ohio 
Valley  netted  the  importers  a  hundred  per  cent. 
Prices  varied  with  the  ease  of  navigation.  When 
ice  blocked  the  Ohio  the  price  of  flour  went  up 
until  it  was  eight  dollars  a  barrel;  whiskey  was  a 
dollar  a  gallon;  potatoes,  a  dollar  a  bushel;  and 
bacon,  twelve  cents  a  pound.  At  these  prices,  the 
total  produce  which  went  by  Fort  Massac  in  the 
early  months  of  1800  would  have  been  worth  on 
the  Ohio  River  upwards  of  two  hundred  thousand 
dollars!  In  the  preceding  summer  Baily  quoted 
flour  at  Norfolk  as  selling  at  sixty- three  shil¬ 
lings  a  barrel  of  196  pounds,  or  double  the  price 
it  was  bringing  on  the  ice-gorged  Ohio.  It  is 
by  such  comparisons  that  we  get  some  inkling  of 
the  value  of  western  produce  and  of  the  rates  in 
western  trade. 

After  a  short  stay  at  Cincinnati,  Baily  set  out 
for  the  South  on  an  “Orleans  boat”  loaded  with 
four  hundred  barrels  of  flour.  At  the  mouth  of 
Pigeon  Creek  he  noted  the  famous  path  to  “Post 


THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800  93 

St.  Vincent’s ”  (Vincennes),  over  which  he  saw 
emigrants  driving  cattle  to  that  ancient  town  on 
the  Wabash.  At  Fort  Massac  he  met  Captain 
Zebulon  M.  Pike,  whose  tact  in  dealing  with  in¬ 
toxicated  Indians  he  commended.  At  New  Mad¬ 
rid  Baily  made  a  stay  of  some  days.  This  settle¬ 
ment,  consisting  of  some  two  hundred  and  fifty 
houses,  was  in  the  possession  of  Spain.  It  was 
within  the  province  of  Louisiana,  soon  to  be  ceded 
to  Napoleon.  New  Orleans  supplied  this  district 
with  merchandise,  but  smuggling  from  the  United 
States  was  connived  at  by  the  Spanish  officials. 

From  New  Madrid  Baily  proceeded  to  Natchez, 
which  then  contained  about  eighty-five  houses. 
The  town  did  not  boast  a  tavern,  but,  as  was  true 
of  other  places  in  the  interior,  this  lack  was  made 
up  for  by  the  hospitality  of  its  inhabitants.  Rice 
and  tobacco  were  being  grown,  Baily  notes,  and 
Georgian  cotton  was  being  raised  in  the  neighbor¬ 
hood.  Several  jennies  were  already  at  work,  and 
their  owners  received  a  royalty  of  one-eighth  of 
the  product.  The  cotton  was  sent  to  New  Orleans, 
where  it  usually  sold  for  twenty  dollars  a  hundred 
weight.  From  Natchez  to  New  Orleans  the  charge 
for  transportation  by  flatboat  was  a  dollar  and  a 
half  a  bag.  The  bags  contained  from  one  hundred 


94  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


and  fifty  to  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds,  and 
each  flatboat  carried  about  two  hundred  and  fifty 
bags.  Baily  adds  two  items  to  the  story  of  the 
development  of  the  mechanical  operation  of  water¬ 
craft.  He  tells  us  that  in  the  fall  of  1796  a  party 
of  “Dutchmen,”  in  the  Pittsburgh  region,  fash¬ 
ioned  a  boat  with  side  paddle  wheels  which  were 
turned  by  a  treadmill  worked  by  eight  horses 
under  the  deck.  This  strange  boat,  which  passed 
Baily  when  he  was  wrecked  on  the  Ohio  near  Grave 
Creek,  appeared  “to  go  with  prodigious  swdftness.” 
Baily  does  not  state  how  much  business  the  boat 
did  on  its  downward  trip  to  New  Orleans  but 
contents  himself  with  remarking  that  the  owners 
expected  the  return  trip  to  prove  very  profit¬ 
able.  When  he  met  the  boat  on  its  upward  voyage 
at  Natchez,  it  had  covered  three  hundred  miles  in 
six  days.  It  was,  however,  not  loaded,  “so  little 
occasion  was  there  for  a  vessel  of  this  kind.”  As 
this  run  between  New  Orleans  and  Natchez  came 
to  be  one  of  the  most  profitable  in  the  United 
States  in  the  early  days  of  steamboating,  less 
than  fifteen  years  later,  the  experience  of  these 
“Flying  Dutchmen”  affords  a  very  pretty  proof 
that  something  more  than  a  means  of  transporta¬ 
tion  is  needed  to  create  commerce.  The  owners 


THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800 


95 


abandoned  their  craft  at  Natchez  in  disgust  and 
returned  home  across  country,  wiser  and  poorer. 

Baily  also  noted  that  a  Dr.  Waters  of  New  Mad¬ 
rid  built  a  schooner  some  few  years  since”  at 
the  head  of  the  Ohio  and  navigated  it  down  the 
Ohio  and  Mississippi  and  around  to  Philadelphia, 
“where  it  is  now  employed  in  the  commerce  of  the 
United  States.”  It  is  thus  apparent,  solely  from 
this  traveler’s  record,  that  an  ocean-going  vessel 
and  a  side-paddle- wheel  boat  had  been  seen  on  the 
Western  Waters  of  the  United  States  at  least  four 
years  before  the  nineteenth  century  arrived. 

Baily  finally  reached  New  Orleans.  The  city 
then  contained  about  a  thousand  houses  and  was 
not  only  the  market  for  the  produce  of  the  river 
plantations  but  also  the  center  of  an  extensive 
Indian  trade.  The  goods  for  this  trade  were 
packed  in  little  barrels  which  were  carried  into  the 
interior  on  pack-horses,  three  barrels  to  a  horse. 
The  traders  traveled  for  hundreds  of  miles  through 
the  woods,  bartering  with  the  Indians  on  the  way 
and  receiving,  in  exchange  for  their  goods,  bear 
and  deer  skins,  beaver  furs,  and  wild  ponies  which 
had  been  caught  by  lariat  in  the  neighboring 
Apalousa  country. 

Baily  had  intended  to  return  to  New  York  by 


96  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


sea,  but  on  his  arrival  at  New  Orleans  he  was  un¬ 
able  to  find  a  ship  sailing  to  New  York.  He  there¬ 
fore  decided  to  proceed  northward  by  way  of  the 
long  and  dangerous  Natchez  Trace  and  the  Ten¬ 
nessee  Path.  Though  few  Europeans  had  made 
this  laborious  journey  before  1800,  the  Natchez 
Trace  had  been  for  many  years  the  land  route  of 
thousands  of  returning  rivermen  who  had  de¬ 
scended  the  Mississippi  in  flatboat  and  barge.  In 
practically  all  cases  these  men  carried  with  them 
the  proceeds  of  their  investment,  and,  as  on  every 
thoroughfare  in  the  world  traveled  by  those  re¬ 
turning  from  market,  so  here,  too,  highwaymen 
and  desperadoes,  red  and  white,  built  their  lairs 
and  lay  in  wait.  Some  of  the  most  revolting  crimes 
of  the  American  frontier  were  committed  on  these 
northward  pathways  and  their  branches. 

Joining  a  party  bound  for  Natchez,  a  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  distant  overland,  Baily  proceeded 
to  Lake  Pontchartrain  and  thence  “north  by  west 
through  the  woods,”  by  way  of  the  ford  of  the 
Tangipahoa,  Cooper’s  Plantation,  Tickfaw  River, 
Amite  River,  and  the  “Hurricane”  (the  path  of  a 
tornado)  to  the  beginning  of  the  Apalousa  country. 
This  tangled  region  of  stunted  growth  was  reputed 
to  be  seven  miles  in  width  from  “shore  to  shore” 


MODEL  OF  JOHN  FITCH'S  STEAMBOAT,  1797 
In  the  collection  of  the  New  York  Historical  Society. 


THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800 


97 


and  three  hundred  miles  in  length.  It  took  the 
party  half  a  day  to  reach  the  opposite  “shore/5 
and  they  had  to  quench  their  thirst  on  the  way 
with  dew. 

At  Natchez,  Baily  organized  a  party  which 
included  the  five  “Dutchmen”  whose  horse  boat 
had  proved  a  failure.  For  their  twenty-one  days5 
journey  to  Nashville  the  party  laid  in  the  follow¬ 
ing  provisions:  15  pounds  of  biscuit,  6  pounds  of 
flour,  12  pounds  of  bacon,  10  pounds  of  dried  beef, 
3  pounds  of  rice,  lf/o  pounds  of  coffee,  4  pounds  of 
sugar,  and  a  quantity  of  pounded  corn,  such  as  the 
Indians  used  on  all  their  journeys.  After  cele¬ 
brating  the  Fourth  of  July,  1797,  with  “all  the  in¬ 
habitants  who  were  hostile  to  the  Spanish  Govern¬ 
ment,  ”  and  bribing  the  baker  at  the  Spanish  fort  to 
bake  them  a  quarter  of  a  hundredweight  of  bread, 
the  party  started  on  their  northward  journey. 

They  reached  without  incident  the  famous 
Grindstone  Ford  of  Bayou  Pierre,  where  cray¬ 
fishes  had  destroyed  a  pioneer  dam.  Beyond,  at 
the  forks  of  the  path  where  the  Choctaw  Trail 
bore  off  to  the  east  the  party  pursued  the  alternate 
Chickasaw  Trail  by  Indian  guidance,  and  soon 
noted  the  change  in  the  character  of  the  soil  from 
black  loam  to  sandy  gravel,  which  indicated  that 


98  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


they  had  reached  the  Piedmont  region.  Indian 
marauders  stole  one  horse  from  the  camp,  and  three 
of  the  party  fell  ill.  The  others,  pressed  for  food, 
were  compelled  to  leave  the  sick  men  in  an  im¬ 
provised  camp  and  to  hasten  on,  promising  to 
send  to  their  aid  the  first  Indian  they  should  meet 
“who  understood  herbs.”  After  appalling  hard¬ 
ships,  they  crossed  the  Tennessee  and  entered  the 
Nashville  country,  where  the  roads  were  good 
enough  for  coaches,  for  they  met  two  on  the  way. 
Thence  Baily  proceeded  to  Knoxville,  seeing,  as 
he  went,  droves  of  cattle  bound  for  the  settlements 
of  west  Tennessee.  With  his  arrival  at  Knoxville, 
his  journal  ends  abruptly;  but  from  other  sources 
we  learn  that  he  sailed  from  New  York  on  his 
return  to  England  in  January,  1798.  His  interest¬ 
ing  record,  however,  remained  unpublished  until 
after  his  death  in  1844. 

Not  only  to  Francis  Baily  but  to  scores  of  other 
travelers,  even  those  of  unfriendly  eyes,  do  modern 
readers  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude.  These  men  have 
preserved  a  multitude  of  pictures  and  a  wealth  of 
data  which  would  otherwise  have  been  lost.  The 
men  of  America  in  those  days  were  writing  the 
story  of  their  deeds  not  on  parchment  or  paper 
but  on  the  virgin  soil  of  the  wilderness.  But 


THE  PASSING  SHOW  OF  1800 


99 


though  the  stage  driver,  the  tavern  keeper,  and 
the  burly  riverman  left  no  description  of  the  life  of 
their  highways  and  their  commerce,  these  visitors 
from  other  lands  have  bequeathed  to  us  their  thou¬ 
sands  of  pages  full  of  the  enterprising  life  of  these 
pioneer  days  in  the  history  of  American  commerce. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT 

The  crowds  who  welcomed  the  successive  stages 
in  the  development  of  American  transportation 
were  much  alike  in  essentials  —  they  were  all 
optimistic,  self-congratulatory,  irrepressible  in 
their  enthusiasm,  and  undaunted  in  their  outlook. 
Dickens,  perhaps,  did  not  miss  the  truth  widely 
when,  in  speaking  of  stage  driving,  he  said  that  the 
cry  of 4  4  Go  Ahead !  ”  in  America  and  of 4  4  All  Right !  ’ ? 
in  England  were  typical  of  the  civilizations  of  the 
two  countries.  Right  or  wrong,  44 Go  Ahead!” 
has  always  been  the  underlying  passion  of  all  men 
interested  in  the  development  of  commerce  and 
transportation  in  these  United  States. 

During  the  era  of  river  improvement  already 

described,  men  of  imagination  were  fascinated 

with  the  idea  of  propelling  boats  by  mechanical 

means.  Even  when  Washington  fared  westward 

in  1784,  he  met  at  Bath,  Virginia,  one  of  these 

100 


THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT  101 


early  experimenters,  James  Rumsey,  who  haled 
him  forthwith  to  a  neighboring  meadow  to  watch 
a  secret  trial  of  a  boat  moved  by  means  of  machin¬ 
ery  which  worked  setting-poles  similar  to  the  iron- 
shod  poles  used  by  the  rivermen  to  propel  their 
boats  upstream.  “The  model, ”  wrote  Washing¬ 
ton,  “and  its  operation  upon  the  water,  which  had 
been  made  to  run  pretty  swift,  not 'only  convinced 
me  of  what  I  before  thought  next  to,  if  not  quite 
impracticable,  but  that  it  might  be  to  the  greatest 
possible  utility  in  inland  navigation.”  Later  he 
mentions  the  “discovery”  as  one  of  those  “cir¬ 
cumstances  which  have  combined  to  render  the 
present  epoch  favorable  above  all  others  for  secur¬ 
ing  a  large  portion  of  the  produce  of  the  west¬ 
ern  settlements,  and  of  the  fur  and  peltry  of  the 
Lakes,  also.” 

From  that  day  forward,  scarcely  a  week  passed 
without  some  new  development  in  the  long  and 
difficult  struggle  to  improve  the  means  of  naviga¬ 
tion.  Among  the  scores  of  men  who  engaged  in 
this  engrossing  but  discouraging  work,  there  is  one 
whom  the  world  is  coming  to  honor  more  highly 
than  in  previous  years  —  John  Fitch,  of  Connec¬ 
ticut,  Pennsylvania,  and  Kentucky.  As  early  as 
August,  1785,  Fitch  launched  on  a  rivulet  in  Bucks 


102  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


County,  Pennsylvania,  a  boat  propelled  by  an 
engine  which  moved  an  endless  chain  to  which 
little  paddles  were  attached.  The  next  year, 
Fitch’s  second  boat,  operated  by  twelve  paddles, 
six  on  a  side  —  an  arrangement  suggesting  the 
“side- wheeler”  of  the  future  —  successfully  plied 
the  Delaware  off  “Conjuror’s  Point,”  as  the  scene 
of  Fitch’s  labors  was  dubbed  in  whimsical  amuse¬ 
ment  and  derision.  In  1787  Rumsey,  encouraged 
by  Franklin,  fashioned  a  boat  propelled  by  a 
stream  of  water  taken  in  at  the  prow  and  ejected 
at  the  stern.  In  1788  Fitch’s  third  boat  traversed 
the  distance  from  Philadelphia  to  Burlington  on 
numerous  occasions  and  ran  as  a  regular  packet 
in  1790,  covering  over  a  thousand  miles.  In  this 
model  Fitch  shifted  the  paddles  from  the  sides  to 
the  rear,  thus  anticipating  in  principle  the  modern 
stern- wheeler. 

It  was  doubtless  Fitch’s  experiments  in  1785  that 
led  to  the  first  plan  in  America  to  operate  a  land 
vehicle  by  steam.  Oliver  Evans,  a  neighbor  and 
acquaintance  of  Fitch’s,  petitioned  the  Pennsyl¬ 
vania  Legislature  in  1786  for  the  right  of  operating 
wagons  propelled  by  steam  on  the  highways  of  that 
State.  This  petition  was  derisively  rejected;  but  a 
similar  one  made  to  the  Legislature  of  Maryland 


THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT  103 


was  granted  on  the  ground  that  such  action  could 
hurt  nobody.  Evans  in  1802  took  fiery  revenge 
on  the  scoffers  by  actually  running  his  little  five- 
horse-power  carriage  through  Philadelphia.  The 
rate  of  speed,  however,  was  so  slow  that  the  idea 
of  moving  vehicles  by  steam  was  still  considered 
useless  for  practical  purposes.  Eight  years  later, 
Evans  offered  to  wager  $3000  that,  on  a  level  road, 
he  could  make  a  carriage  driven  by  steam  equal  the 
speed  of  the  swiftest  horse,  but  he  found  no  re¬ 
sponse.  In  1812  he  asserted  that  he  was  willing  to 
wager  that  he  could  drive  a  steam  carriage  on  level 
rails  at  a  rate  of  fifteen  miles  an  hour.  Evans  thus 
anticipated  the  belief  of  Stephenson  that  steam- 
driven  vehicles  would  travel  best  on  railed  tracks. 

In  the  development  of  the  steamboat  almost  all 
earlier  means  of  propulsion,  natural  and  artificial, 
were  used  as  models  by  the  inventors.  The  fins 
of  fishes,  the  webbed  feet  of  amphibious  birds,  the 
paddles  of  the  Indian,  and  the  poles  and  oars  of 
the  riverman,  were  all  imitated  by  the  patient 
inventors  struggling  with  the  problem.  Rumsey’s 
first  effort  was  a  copy  of  the  old  setting-pole  idea. 
Fitch’s  model  of  1785  had  side  paddle  wheels  oper-  . 
ated  by  an  endless  chain.  Fitch’s  second  and  third 
models  were  practically  paddle-wheel  models,  one 


104  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


having  the  paddles  at  the  side  and  the  other  at  the 
stern.  Ormsbee  of  Connecticut  made  a  model, 
in  1792,  on  the  plan  of  a  duck’s  foot.  Morey  made 
what  may  be  called  the  first  real  stern-wheeler  in 
1794.  Two  years  later  Fitch  ran  a  veritable  screw 
propeller  on  Collect  Pond  near  New  York  City. 
Although  General  Benjamin  Tupper  of  Massa¬ 
chusetts  had  been  fashioning  devices  of  this  char¬ 
acter  eight  years  previously,  Fitch  was  the  first  to 
apply  the  idea  effectively.  In  1798  he  evolved  the 
strange,  amphibious  creation  known  as  his  ‘ 4  model 
of  1798,”  which  has  never  been  adequately  ex¬ 
plained.  It  was  a  steamboat  on  iron  wheels  pro¬ 
vided  with  flanges,  as  though  it  was  intended  to  be 
run  on  submerged  tracks.  What  may  have  been 
the  idea  of  its  inventor,  living  out  his  last  gloomy 
days  in  Kentucky,  may  never  be  known;  but  it  is 
possible  to  see  in  this  anomalous  machine  an  antici¬ 
pation  of  the  locomotive  not  approached  by  any 
other  American  of  the  time.  Thus,  prior  to  1800 
almost  every  type  of  mechanism  for  the  propulsion 
of  steamboats  had  been  suggested  and  tried;  and 
in  1804,  Stevens’s  twin-screw  propeller  completed 
the  list. 

It  is  not  alone  Fitch’s  development  of  the  de¬ 
vices  of  the  endless  chain,  paddle  wheel,  and  screw 


\ 


THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT  105 


propeller  and  of  his  puzzling  earth-and-water 
creature  that  gives  luster  to  his  name.  His  pro¬ 
phetic  insight  into  the  future  national  importance 
of  the  steamboat  and  his  conception,  as  an  inven¬ 
tor,  of  his  moral  obligations  to  the  people  at  large 
were  as  original  and  striking  in  the  science  of  that 
age  as  were  his  models. 

The  early  years  of  the  national  life  of  the  United 
States  were  the  golden  age  of  monopoly.  Every 
colony,  as  a  matter  of  course,  had  granted  to  cer¬ 
tain  men  special  privileges,  and,  as  has  already 
been  pointed  out,  the  questions  of  monopolies  and 
combinations  in  restraint  of  trade  had  arisen  even 
so  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Interwoven  inextricably  with  these  problems  was 
the  whole  problem  of  colonial  rivalry,  which  in  its 
later  form  developed  into  an  insistence  on  state 
rights.  Every  improvement  in  the  means  of  trans¬ 
portation,  every  development  of  natural  resources, 
every  new  invention  was  inevitably  considered 
from  the  standpoint  of  sectional  interests  and  with 
a  view  to  its  monopolistic  possibilities.  This  was 
particularly  true  in  the  case  of  the  steamboat, 
because  of  its  limitation  to  rivers  and  bays  which 
could  be  specifically  enumerated  and  defined. 
For  instance,  Washington  in  1784  attests  the  fact 


106  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

that  Rumsey  operated  his  mechanical  boat  at 
Bath  in  secret  “until  he  saw  the  effect  of  an  appli¬ 
cation  he  was  about  to  make  to  the  Assembly  of 
this  State,  for  a  reward.”  The  application  was 
successful,  and  Rumsey  was  awarded  a  monopoly 
in  Virginia  waters  for  ten  years. 

Fitch,  on  the  other  hand,  when  he  applied  to 
Congress  in  1785,  desired  merely  to  obtain  official 
encouragement  and  intended  to  allow  his  invention 
to  be  used  by  all  comers.  Meeting  only  with  rebuff, 
he  realized  that  his  only  hope  of  organizing  a 
company  that  could  provide  working  capital  lay 
in  securing  monopolistic  privileges.  In  1786  he 
accordingly  applied  to  the  individual  States  and 
secured  the  sole  right  to  operate  steamboats  on 
the  waterways  of  New  Jersey,  Delaware,  New 
York,  Pennsylvania,  and  Virginia.  How  different 
would  have  been  the  story  of  the  steamboat  if 
Congress  had  accepted  Fitch  at  his  word  and  cre¬ 
ated  a  precedent  against  monopolistic  rights  on 
American  rivers! 

i 

Fitch,  in  addition  to  the  high  purpose  of  de¬ 
voting  his  new  invention  to  the  good  of  the  nation 
without  personal  considerations,  must  be  credited 
with  perceiving  at  the  very  beginning  the  peculiar 
importance  of  the  steamboat  to  the  American  West. 


THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT  107 


His  original  application  to  Congress  in  1785 
opened:  “The  subscriber  begs  leave  to  lay  at  the 
feet  of  Congress,  an  attempt  he  has  made  to  facili¬ 
tate  the  internal  Navigation  of  the  United  States, 
adapted  especially  to  the  Waters  of  the  Mississippi.” 
At  another  time  with  prophetic  vision  he  wrote: 
“The  Grand  and  Principle  object  must  be  on  the 
Atlantick,  which  would  soon  overspread  the  wild 
forests  of  America  with  people,  and  make  us  the 
most  oppulent  Empire  on  Earth.  Pardon  me, 
generous  public,  for  suggesting  ideas  that  cannot 
be  dijested  at  this  day.” 

Foremost  in  exhibiting  high  civic  and  patriotic 
motives,  Fitch  was  also  foremost  in  appreciating 
the  importance  of  the  steamboat  in  the  expansion 
of  American  trade.  This  significance  was  also 
clearly  perceived  by  his  brilliant  successor,  Robert 
Fulton.  That  the  West  and  its  commerce  were 
always  predominant  in  Fulton’s  great  schemes  is 
proved  by  words  which  he  addressed  in  1803  to 
James  Monroe,  American  Ambassador  to  Great 
Britain:  “You  have  perhaps  heard  of  the  success 
of  my  experiments  for  navigating  boats  by  steam 
engines  and  you  will  feel  the  importance  of  estab¬ 
lishing  such  boats  on  the  Mississippi  and  other 
rivers  of  the  United  States  as  soon  as  possible.” 


108  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Robert  Fulton  bad  been  interested  in  steamboats 
for  a  period  not  definitely  known,  possibly  since  his 
sojourn  in  Philadelphia  in  the  days  of  Fitch’s  early 
efforts.  That  he  profited  by  the  other  inventor’s 
efforts  at  the  time,  however,  is  not  suggested  by 
any  of  his  biographers.  He  subsequently  went  to 
London  and  gave  himself  up  to  the  study  and 
practice  of  engineering.  There  he  later  met  James 
Rumsey,  who  came  to  England  in  1788,  and  by 
him  no  doubt  was  informed,  if  he  was  not  already 
aware,  of  the  experiments  and  models  of  Rumsey 
and  Fitch.  He  obtained  the  loan  of  Fitch’s  plans 
and  drawings  and  made  his  own  trial  of  various 
existing  devices,  such  as  oars,  paddles,  duck’s  feet, 
and  Fitch’s  endless  chain  with  “resisting-boards” 
attached.  Meanwhile  Fulton  was  also  devoting 
his  attention  to  problems  of  canal  construction 
and  to  the  development  of  submarine  boats  and 
submarine  explosives.  He  was  engaged  in  these 
researches  in  France  in  1801  when  the  new  Ameri¬ 
can  minister,  Robert  R.  Livingston,  arrived,  and 
the  two  men  soon  formed  a  friendship  destined 
to  have  a  vital  and  enduring  influence  upon  the 
development  of  steam  navigation  on  the  inland 
waterways  of  America. 

Livingston  already  had  no  little  experience  in 


THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT  109 

the  same  field  of  invention  as  Fulton.  In  1798  he 
had  obtained,  for  a  period  of  twenty  years,  the 
right  to  operate  steamboats  on  all  the  waters  of  the 
State  of  New  York,  a  monopoly  which  had  just 
lapsed  owing  to  the  death  of  Fitch.  In  the  same 
year  Livingston  had  built  a  steamboat  which  had 
made  three  miles  an  hour  on  the  Hudson.  He  had 
experimented  with  most  of  the  models  then  in 
existence  —  upright  paddles  at  the  side,  endless- 
chain  paddles,  and  stern  paddle  wheels.  Fulton 
was  soon  inspired  to  resume  his  efforts  by  Living¬ 
ston’s  account  of  his  own  experiments  and  of  recent 

\ 

advances  in  England,  where  a  steamboat  had  navi¬ 
gated  the  Thames  in  1801  and  a  year  later  the 
famous  stern-wheeler  Charlotte  Dundas  had  towed 
boats  of  140  tons’  burden  on  the  Forth  and  Clyde 
Canal  at  the  rate  of  five  miles  an  hour.  In  this 
same  year  Fulton  and  Livingston  made  successful 
experiments  on  the  Seine. 

It  is  fortunate  that,  in  one  particular,  Living¬ 
ston’s  influence  did  not  prevail  with  Fulton,  for 
the  American  Minister  was  distinctly  prejudiced 
against  paddle  wheels.  Although  Livingston  had 
previously  ridden  as  a  passenger  on  Morey’s  stern¬ 
wheeler  at  the  rate  of  five  miles  an  hour,  yet 
he  had  turned  a  deaf  ear  when  his  partner  in 


110  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


experimentation,  Nicholas  J.  Roosevelt,  had  in¬ 
sisted  strongly  on  “throwing  wheels  over  the  sides.” 
At  the  beginning,  Fulton  himself  was  inclined  to 
agree  with  Livingston  in  this  respect;  but,  prob¬ 
ably  late  in  1803,  he  began  to  investigate  more  care¬ 
fully  the  possibilities  of  the  paddle  wheel  as  used 
twice  in  America  by  Morey  and  by  four  or  five 
experimenters  in  Europe.  In  1804  an  eight-mile 
trip  which  Fulton  made  on  the  Charlotte  Dundas 
in  an  hour  and  twenty  minutes  established  his 
faith  in  the  undeniable  superiority  of  two  funda¬ 
mental  factors  of  early  navigation  —  paddle  wheels 
and  British  engines.  Fulton’s  splendid  fame  rests, 
and  rightly  so,  on  his  perception  of  the  fact  that 
no  mere  ingenuity  of  design  could  counterbalance 
weakness,  uncertainty,  and  inefficiency  in  the  me¬ 
chanism  which  was  intended  to  make  a  steamboat 
run  and  keep  running.  As  early  as  November,  1803, 
Fulton  had  written  to  Boulton  and  Watt  of  Bir¬ 
mingham  that  he  had  “not  confidence  in  any  other 
engines  ”  than  theirs  and  that  he  was  seeking  a  means 
of  getting  one  of  those  engines  to  America.  “  I  can¬ 
not  establish  the  boat  without  the  engine,”  he  now 
emphatically  wrote  to  James  Monroe,  then  Ambas¬ 
sador  to  the  Court  of  St.  James.  “The  question 
then  is  shall  we  or  shall  we  not  have  such  boats.” 


THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT  111 


But  there  were  difficulties  in  the  way.  Though 
England  forbade  the  exportation  of  engines,  Ful¬ 
ton  knew  that,  in  numerous  instances,  this  rule 
had  not  been  enforced,  and  he  had  hopes  of  success. 
“The  British  Government,  ”  Fulton  wrote  Monroe, 
“  must  have  little  friendship  or  even  civility  toward 
America,  if  they  refuse  such  a  request.”  Before 
the  steamboat  which  Fulton  and  Livingston  pro¬ 
posed  to  build  in  America  could  be  operated  there 
was  another  obstacle  to  be  surmounted.  The 
rights  of  steam  navigation  of  New  York  waters 
which  Livingston  had  obtained  on  the  death  of 
Fitch  in  1798  had  lapsed  because  of  his  failure  to 
run  a  steamboat  at  the  rate  of  four  miles  an  hour, 
which  was  one  provision  of  the  grant.  In  April, 
1803,  the  grant  was  renewed  to  Livingston,  Roose¬ 
velt,  and  Fulton  jointly  for  another  period  of 
twenty  years,  and  the  date  when  the  boat  was 
to  make  the  required  four  miles  an  hour  was 
extended  finally  to  1807. 

Any  one  who  is  inclined  to  criticize  the  Living- 
ston-Roosevelt-Fulton  monopoly  which  now  came 
into  existence  should  remember  that  the  previous 
state  grants  formed  a  precedent  of  no  slight 
moment.  The  whole  proceeding  was  in  perfect 
accord  with  the  spirit  of  the  times,  for  it  was  an 


112  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


era  of  speculation  and  monopoly  ushered  in  by  the 
toll-road  and  turnpike  organizations,  when  prob¬ 
ably  no  less  than  two  hundred  companies  were 
formed.  It  was  young  America  showing  itself  in 
an  unmistakable  manner  —  “conceived  in  liberty” 
and  starting  on  the  long  road  to  learn  that  obedi¬ 
ence  to  law  and  respect  for  public  rights  constitute 
true  liberty.  Finally,  it  must  be  pointed  out  that 
Fulton,  like  his  famous  predecessor,  Fitch,  was 
impelled  by  motives  far  higher  than  the  love  of 
personal  gain.  “I  consider  them  [steamboats]  of 
such  infinite  use  in  America,”  he  wrote  Monroe, 
“that  I  should  feel  a  culpable  neglect  toward  my 
country  if  I  relaxed  for  a  moment  in  pursuing  every 
necessary  measure  for  carrying  it  into  effect.” 
And  later,  when  repeating  his  argument,  he 
says:  “I  plead  this  not  for  myself  alone  but  for 
our  country.” 

It  is  now  evident  why  the  alliance  of  Fulton  with 
Livingston  was  of  such  epoch-making  importance, 
for,  although  it  may  have  in  some  brief  measure 
delayed  Fulton’s  adoption  of  paddle  wheels,  it 
gave  him  an  entry  to  the  waters  of  New  York. 
Livingston  and  Fulton  thus  supplemented  each 
other;  Livingston  possessed  a  monopoly  and  Ful¬ 
ton  a  correct  estimate  of  the  value  of  paddle  wheels 


ROBERT  FULTON'S  FIRST  STEAMBOAT 

Drawing  by  Richard  Varick  DeWitt.  In  the  collection  of  the 
New  York  Historical  Society.  The  inscription  on  the  drawing 
states  that  the  upper  picture  represents  the  Clermont  as  she  was 
used  for  a  packet-boat  in  1807,  drawn  from  personal  recollection 
and  description  of  persons  who  traveled  in  the  boat.  It  was 
about  100  feet  long,  propelled  by  a  cross-head  bell-crank  engine 
of  24  horse-power,  made  by  Watt  and  Boulton.  During  the  next 
winter  the  vessel  was  enlarged  to  about  150  feet  in  length  and  18 
feet  in  width,  and  the  wheels  were  placed  within  the  hull.  The 
original  engines  were  retained.  It  was  named  the  North  River  of 
Clermont,  and  its  appearance  is  shown  in  the  lower  picture. 
Accompanying  the  inscription  is  the  following  certification: 

“  I,  Riley  Bartholomew,  for  some  time  an  officer  of  the  Steam¬ 
boat  North  River  of  Clermont,  certify  the  above  to  be  a  correct 
representation  of  that  vessel. 

“  Riley  Bartholomew.” 

“Albany,  September,  1858.” 


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THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT  113 


and,  secondly,  of  Boulton  and  Watt  engines.  It 
was  a  rare  combination  destined  to  crown  with 
success  a  long  period  of  effort  and  discouragement 
in  the  history  of  navigation. 

After  considerable  delay  and  difficulty,  the 
two  Americans  obtained  permission  to  export  the 
necessary  engine  from  Great  Britain  and  shipped  it 
to  New  York,  whither  Fulton  himself  proceeded 
to  construct  his  steamboat.  The  hull  was  built 
by  Charles  Brown,  a  New  York  shipbuilder,  and 
the  Boulton  and  Watt  machinery,  set  in  masonry, 
was  finally  installed. 

The  voyage  to  Albany,  against  a  stiff  wind,  occu¬ 
pied  thirty-two  hours;  the  return  trip  was  made 
in  thirty.  H.  Freeland,  one  of  the  spectators 
who  stood  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson  when  the 
boat  made  its  maiden  voyage  in  1807,  gives  the 
following  description : 

Some  imagined  it  to  be  a  sea-monster  whilst  others 
did  not  hesitate  to  express  their  belief  that  it  was  a 
sign  of  the  approaching  judgment.  What  seemed 
strange  in  the  vessel  was  the  substitution  of  lofty  and 
straight  smoke-pipes,  rising  from  the  deck,  instead  of 
the  gracefully  tapered  masts  .  .  .  and,  in  place  of  the 
spars  and  rigging,  the  curious  play  of  the  walking- 
beam  and  pistons,  and  the  slow  turning  and  splash¬ 
ing  of  the  huge  and  naked  paddle-wheels,  met  the 


8 


114  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


astonished  gaze.  The  dense  clouds  of  smoke,  as  they 
rose,  wave  upon  wave,  added  still  more  to  the  wonder¬ 
ment  of  the  rustics.  .  .  .  On  her  return  trip  the  curi¬ 
osity  she  excited  was  scarcely  less  intense  .  .  .  fisher¬ 
men  became  terrified,  and  rode  homewards,  and  they 
saw  nothing  but  destruction  devastating  their  fishing 
grounds,  whilst  the  wreaths  of  black  vapor  and  rushing 
noise  of  the  paddle-wheels,  foaming  with  the  stirred-up 
water,  produced  great  excitement.  .  .  . 

With  the  launching  of  the  Clermont  on  the  Hud¬ 
son  a  new  era  in  American  history  began.  How 
quick  with  life  it  was  many  of  the  preceding  pages 
bear  testimony.  The  infatuation  of  the  public  for 
building  toll  and  turnpike  roads  was  now  at  its 
height.  Only  a  few  years  before,  a  comprehensive 
scheme  of  internal  improvements  had  been  out¬ 
lined  by  Jefferson’s  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
Albert  Gallatin.  When  a  boy,  it  is  said,  he  had 
lain  on  the  floor  of  a  surveyor’s  cabin  on  the  west¬ 
ern  slopes  of  the  Alleghanies  and  had  heard 
Washington  describe  to  a  rough  crowd  of  Western¬ 
ers  his  plan  to  unite  the  Great  Lakes  with  the 
Potomac  in  one  mighty  chain  of  inland  commerce. 
Jefferson’s  Administration  was  now  about  to  de¬ 
vote  the  surplus  in  the  Treasury  to  the  construc¬ 
tion  of  national  highways  and  canals.  The  Cum¬ 
berland  Road,  to  be  built  across  the  Alleghanies 


THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT  115 


by  the  War  Department,  was  authorized  by  the 
President  in  the  same  year  in  which  the  Clermont 
made  her  first  trip;  and  Jesse  Hawley,  at  his  table 
in  a  little  room  in  a  Pittsburgh  boarding  house, 
was  even  now  penning  in  a  series  of  articles,  pub¬ 
lished  in  the  Pittsburgh  Commonwealth ,  beginning 
in  January,  1807,  the  first  clear  challenge  to  the 
Empire  State  to  connect  the  Hudson  and  Lake 
Erie  by  a  canal.  Thus  the  two  next  steps  in  the 
history  of  inland  commerce  in  America  were  ready 
to  be  taken. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES 

The  two  great  thoroughfares  of  American  com¬ 
merce  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
were  the  Cumberland  Road  and  the  Erie  Canal. 
The  first  generation  of  the  new  century  witnessed 
the  great  burst  of  population  into  the  West  which 
at  once  gave  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Michigan, 
and  Wisconsin  a  place  of  national  importance 
which  they  have  never  relinquished.  So  far  as 
pathways  of  commerce  contributed  to  the  crea¬ 
tion  of  this  veritable  new  republic  in  the  Middle 
West,  the  Cumberland  Road  and  the  Erie  Canal, 
cooperating  respectively  with  Ohio  River  and 
Lake  Erie  steamboats,  were  of  the  utmost  impor¬ 
tance.  The  national  spirit,  said  to  have  arisen 
from  the  second  war  with  England,  had  its  clear¬ 
est  manifestation  in  the  throwing  of  a  great 
macadamized  roadway  across  the  Alleghanies 

to  the  Ohio  River  and  the  digging  of  the  Erie 

116 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES  117 

Canal  through  the  swamps  and  wildernesses  of 
New  York. 

Both  of  these  pathways  were  essentially  the 
fruition  of  the  doctrine  to  which  Washington  gave 
wide  circulation  in  his  letter  to  Harrison  in  1784, 
wherein  he  pictured  the  vision  of  a  vast  Republic 
united  by  commercial  chains.  Both  were  essen¬ 
tially  Western  enterprises.  The  highway  was 
built  to  fulfil  the  promise  which  the  Government 
had  made  in  1802  to  use  a  portion  of  the  money 
accruing  from  the  sale  of  public  lands  in  Ohio  in 
order  to  connect  that  young  State  with  Atlantic 
waters.  It  was  proposed  to  build  the  canal,  accord¬ 
ing  to  one  early  plan,  with  funds  to  be  obtained 
by  the  sale  of  land  in  Michigan.  So  firmly  did 
the  promoters  believe  in  the  national  importance 
of  this  project  that  subscriptions,  according  to 
another  plan,  were  to  be  solicited  as  far  afield  as 
Vermont  in  the  North  and  Kentucky  in  the  South¬ 
west.  All  that  Washington  had  hoped  for,  and  all 
that  Aaron  Burr  is  supposed  to  have  been  hopeless 
of,  were  epitomized  in  these  great  works  of  inter¬ 
nal  improvement.  They  bespoke  cooperation  of 
the  highest  existing  types  of  loyalty,  optimism, 
financial  skill,  and  engineering  ability. 

Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  the  contrasts  between 


118  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

these  undertakings  were  great.  The  two  enter¬ 
prises,  one  the  work  of  the  nation  and  the  other 
that  of  a  single  State,  were  practically  contempo¬ 
raneous  and  were  therefore  constantly  inviting 
comparison.  The  Cumberland  Road  was,  for  its 
day,  a  gigantic  government  undertaking  involving 
problems  of  finance,  civil  engineering,  eminent 
domain,  state  rights,  local  favoritism,  and  political 
machination.  Its  purpose  was  noble  and  its  suc¬ 
cessful  construction  a  credit  to  the  nation;  but  the 
paternalism  to  which  it  gave  rise  and  the  conflicts 
which  it  precipitated  in  Congress  over  questions 
of  constitutionality  were  remembered  soberly  for  a 
century.  The  Erie  Canal,  after  its  projectors  had 
failed  to  obtain  national  aid,  became  the  undertak¬ 
ing  of  one  commonwealth  conducted,  amid  count¬ 
less  doubts  and  jeers,  to  a  conclusion  unbelievably 
successful.  As  a  result  many  States,  foregoing 
Federal  aid,  attempted  to  duplicate  the  successful 
feat  of  New  York.  In  this  respect  the  northern  canal 
resembled  the  Lancaster  Turnpike  and  tempted 
scores  of  States  and  corporations  to  expenditures 
which  were  unwise  in  circumstances  less  favorable 
than  those  of  the  fruitful  and  strategic  Empire  State. 

In  the  conception  of  both  the  roadway  and  the 
canal,  it  should  be  noted,  the  old  idea  of  making 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES  119 


use  of  navigable  rivers  still  persisted.  The  act 
foreshadowing  the  Cumberland  Road,  passed  in 
1802,  called  for  “  making  public  roads  leading  from 
the  navigable  waters  emptying  into  the  Atlantic, 
to  the  Ohio,  to  said  State  Ohio  and  through  the 
same”;  and  Hawley’s  original  plan  was  to  build 
the  Erie  Canal  from  Utica  to  Buffalo  using  the 
Mohawk  from  Utica  to  the  Hudson: 

Historic  Cumberland,  in  Maryland,  was  chosen 
by  Congress  as  the  eastern  terminus  of  the  great 
highway  which  should  bind  Ohio  to  the  Old  Thir¬ 
teen.  Commissioners  were  appointed  in  1806  to 
choose  the  best  route  by  which  the  great  highway 
could  reach  the  Ohio  River  between  Steubenville, 
Ohio  and  the  mouth  of  Grave  Creek;  but  difficul¬ 
ties  of  navigation  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Three 
Sister  Islands  near  Charlestown,  or  Wellsburg, 
West  Virginia,  led  to  the  choice  of  Wheeling, 
farther  down,  as  a  temporary  western  terminus. 

The  route  selected  was  an  excellent  compromise 
between  the  long  standing  rival  claims  of  Pennsyl¬ 
vania,  Maryland,  and  Virginia  to  the  trade  of  the 
West.  If  Baltimore  and  Alexandria  were  to  be 
better  served  than  Philadelphia,  the  advantage 
was  slight;  and  Pennsylvania  gained  compensa¬ 
tion,  ere  the  State  gave  the  National  Government 


120  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


permission  to  build  the  road  within  its  limits,  by 
dictating  that  it  should  pass  through  Uniontown 
and  Washington.  In  this  way  Pennsylvania  ob¬ 
tained,  without  cost,  unrivaled  advantages  for  a 
portion  of  the  State  which  might  otherwise  have 
been  long  neglected. 

The  building  of  the  road,  however  satisfactory 
in  the  main,  was  not  undertaken  without  arousing 
many  sectional  and  personal  hopes  and  prejudices 
and  jealousies,  of  which  the  echoes  still  linger  in 
local  legends  today.  Land-owners,  mine-owners, 
factory-owners,  innkeepers  and  countless  towns¬ 
men  and  villagers  anxiously  watched  the  course  of 
the  road  and  were  bitterly  disappointed  if  the  new 
sixty-four-foot  thoroughfare  did  not  pass  imme¬ 
diately  through  their  property.  On  the  other 
hand,  promoters  of  toll  and  turnpike  companies, 
who  had  promising  schemes  and  long  lists  of  share¬ 
holders,  were  far  from  eager  to  have  their  prop¬ 
erty  taken  for  a  national  road.  No  one  believed 
that,  if  it  proved  successful,  it  would  be  the  only 
work  of  its  kind,  and  everywhere  men  looked  for 
the  construction  of  government  highways  out  of 
the  overflowing  wealth  of  the  treasury  within  the 
next  few  years. 

In  April,  1811,  the  first  contracts  were  let  for 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES  121 


building  the  first  ten  miles  of  the  road  from  its 
eastern  terminus  and  were  completed  in  1812. 
More  contracts  were  let  in  1812,  1813,  and  1815. 
Even  in  those  days  of  war  when  the  drain  on  the 
national  treasury  was  excessive,  over  a  quarter  of 
a  million  dollars  was  appropriated  for  the  construc¬ 
tion  of  the  road.  Onward  it  crawled,  through  the 
beautiful  Cumberland  gateway  of  the  Potomac,  to 
Big  Savage  and  Little  Savage  Mountains,  to  Little 
Pine  Hun  (the  first  “Western”  water),  to  Red  Hill 
(later  called  “Shades  of  Death”  because  of  the 
gloomy  forest  growth),  to  high-flung  Negro  Moun¬ 
tain  at  an  elevation  of  2325  feet,  and  thence  on  to 
the  Youghiogheny,  historic  Great  Meadows,  Brad- 
dock’s  Grave,  Laurel  Hill,  Uniontown,  and  Browns¬ 
ville,  where  it  crossed  the  Monongahela.  Thence, 
on  almost  a  straight  line,  it  sped  by  way  of  Wash¬ 
ington  to  Wheeling.  Its  average  cost  was  upwards 
of  thirteen  thousand  dollars  a  mile  from  the  Poto¬ 
mac  to  the  Ohio.  The  road  was  used  in  1817,  and 
in  another  year  the  mail  coaches  of  the  United 
States  were  running  from  Washington  to  Wheeling, 
West  Virginia.  Within  five  years  one  of  the  five 
commission  houses  doing  business  at  Wheeling  is 
said  to  have  handled  over  a  thousand  wagons 
carrying  freight  of  nearly  two  tons  each. 


122  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


The  Cumberland  Road  at  once  leaped  into  a 
position  of  leadership,  both  in  volume  of  commerce 
and  in  popularity,  and  held  its  own  for  two  famous 
decades.  The  pulse  of  the  nation  beat  to  the 
steady  throb  of  trade  along  its  highway.  Mary¬ 
land  at  once  stretched  out  her  eager  arms,  along 
stone  roads,  through  Frederick  and  Hagerstown 
to  Cumberland,  and  thus  formed  a  single  route 
from  the  Ohio  to  Baltimore.  Great  stagecoach 
and  freight  lines  were  soon  established,  each  pat¬ 
ronizing  its  own  stage  house  or  wagon  stand  in  the 
thriving  towns  along  the  road.  The  primitive  box 
stage  gave  way  to  the  oval  or  football  type  with 
curved  top  and  bottom,  and  this  was  displaced  in 
turn  by  the  more  practical  Concord  coach  of  na¬ 
tional  fame.  The  names  of  the  important  stage¬ 
coach  companies  were  quite  as  well  known,  a 
century  ago,  as  those  of  our  great  railways  today. 
Chief  among  them  were  the  National ,  Good  Intent, 
June  Bug ,  and  Pioneer  lines.  The  coaches,  drawn 
by  four  and  sometimes  six  horses,  were  usually 
painted  in  brilliant  colors  and  were  named  after 
eminent  statesmen.  The  drivers  of  these  gay 
chariots  were  characters  quite  as  famous  locally 
as  the  personages  whose  names  were  borne  by  the 
coaches.  Westover  and  his  record  of  forty-five 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES  123 


minutes  for  the  twenty  miles  between  Uniontown 
and  Brownsville,  and  “Red”  Bunting,  with  his 
drive  of  a  hundred  and  thirty-one  miles  in  twelve 
hours  with  the  declaration  of  war  against  Mexico, 
will  be  long  famous  on  the  curving  stretches  of  the 
Cumberland  Road. 

Although  the  freight  and  express  traffic  of  those 
days  lacked  the  picturesqueness  of  the  passenger 
coaches,  nothing  illustrates  so  conclusively  what 
the  great  road  meant  to  an  awakening  West  as  the 
long  lines  of  heavy  Conestogas  and  rattling  express 
wagons  which  raced  at  “unprecedented”  speed 
across  hill  and  vale.  Searight,  the  local  historian 
of  the  road,  describes  these  large,  broad-wheeled 
wagons  covered  with  white  canvas  as 

visible  all  the  day  long,  at  every  point,  making  the 
highway  look  more  like  a  leading  avenue  of  a  great 
city  than  a  road  through  rural  districts.  ...  I  have 
staid  over  night  with  William  Cheets  on  Nigger  [Negro] 
Mountain  when  there  were  about  thirty  six-horse 
teams  in  the  wagon  yard,  a  hundred  Kentucky  mules 
in  an  adjoining  lot,  a  thousand  hogs  in  their  enclosures, 
and  as  many  fat  cattle  in  adjoining  fields.  The  music 
made  by  this  large  number  of  hogs  eating  corn  on  a 
frosty  night  I  shall  never  forget.  After  supper  and 
attention  to  the  teams,  the  wagoners  would  gather  in 
the  bar-room  and  listen  to  the  music  on  the  violin 
furnished  by  one  of  their  fellows,  have  a  Virginia 


124  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


hoe-down,  sing  songs,  tell  anecdotes,  and  hear  the  experi¬ 
ences  of  drivers  and  drovers  from  all  points  of  the 
road,  and,  when  it  was  all  over,  unroll  their  beds,  lay 
them  down  on  the  floor  before  the  bar-room  fire  side 
by  side,  and  sleep  with  their  feet  near  the  blaze  as 
soundly  as  under  the  parental  roof. 

Meanwhile  New  York,  the  other  great  rival  for 
Western  trade,  was  intent  on  its  own  darling  proj¬ 
ect,  the  Erie  Canal.  In  1808,  three  years  before  the 
building  of  the  Cumberland  Road,  Joshua  Forman 
offered  a  bill  in  favor  of  the  canal  in  the  Legisla¬ 
ture  of  New  York.  In  plain  but  dignified  language 
this  document  stated  that  New  York  possessed 
“the  best  route  of  communication  between  the 
Atlantic  and  western  waters,”  and  that  it  held 
“the  first  commercial  rank  in  the  United  States.” 
The  bill  also  noted  that,  while  “several  of  our  sister 
States”  were  seeking  to  secure  “the  trade  of  that 
wide  extended  country,”  their  natural  advantages 
were  “vastly  inferior.”  Six  hundred  dollars  was 
the  amount  appropriated  for  a  brief  survey,  and 
Congress  was  asked  to  vote  aid  for  the  construc¬ 
tion  of  the  “Buffalo-Utica  Canal.”  The  matter 
was  widely  talked  about  but  action  was  delayed. 
Doubt  as  to  the  best  route  to  be  pursued  caused 
some  discussion.  If  the  western  terminus  were  to 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES  125 

be  located  on  Lake  Ontario  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Oswego,  as  some  advocated,  would  produce  not 
make  its  way  to  Montreal  instead  of  to  New  York? 
In  1810  a  new  committee  was  appointed  and, 
though  their  report  favored  the  paralleling  of  the 
course  of  the  Mohawk  and  Oswego  rivers,  their 
engineer,  James  Geddes,  gave  strength  to  the 
party  which  believed  a  direct  canal  would  best  serve 
the  interests  of  the  State.  It  is  worth  noting 
that  Livingston  and  Fulton  were  added  to  the 
committee  in  1811. 

The  hopes  of  outside  aid  from  Congress  and  ad¬ 
jacent  States  met  with  disappointment.  In  vain 
did  the  advocates  of  the  canal  in  1812  plead  that 
its  construction  would  promote  “  a  free  and  general 
intercourse  between  different  parts  of  the  United 
States,  tend  to  the  aggrandizement  and  prosperity 
of  the  country,  and  consolidate  and  strengthen 
the  Union.”  The  plan  to  have  the  Government 
subsidize  the  canal  by  vesting  in  the  State  of  New 
York  four  million  acres  of  Michigan  land  brought 
out  a  protest  from  the  West  which  is  notable  not  so 
much  because  it  records  the  opposition  of  this  sec¬ 
tion  as  because  it  illustrates  the  shortsightedness 
of  most  of  the  arguments  raised  against  the  New 
York  enterprise.  The  purpose  of  the  canal,  the 


126  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


detractors  asserted,  was  to  build  up  New  York 
City  to  the  detriment  of  Montreal,  and  the  naviga¬ 
tion  of  Lake  Ontario,  whose  beauty  they  touchingly 
described,  was  to  be  abandoned  for  a  “narrow, 
winding  obstructed  canal  .  .  .  for  an  expense 
which  arithmetic  dares  not  approach.”  It  was,  in 
their  minds,  unquestionably  a  selfish  object,  and 
they  believed  that  “both  correct  science,  and  the 
dictates  of  patriotism  and  philanthropy  [should] 
lead  to  the  adoption  of  more  liberal  principles.”  It 
was  a  shortsighted  object,  “predicated  on  the 
eternal  adhesion  of  the  Canadas  to  England.”  It 
would  never  give  satisfaction  since  trade  would 
always  ignore  artificial  and  seek  natural  routes. 
The  attempting  of  such  comparatively  useless  proj¬ 
ects  would  discourage  worthy  schemes,  relax  the 
bonds  of  Union,  and  depress  the  national  character. 
But  though  these  Westerners  thus  misjudged  the 
possibilities  of  the  Erie  Canal,  we  must  doff  our 
hats  to  them  for  their  foresight  in  suggesting  that, 
instead  of  aiding  the  Erie  Canal,  the  nation  ought 
to  build  canals  at  Niagara  Falls  and  Panama! 

The  War  of  1812  suspended  all  talk  of  the  canal, 
but  the  subject  was  again  brought  up  by  Judge 
Platt  in  the  autumn  of  1816.  With  alacrity  strong 
men  came  to  the  aid  of  the  measure.  DeWitt 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES  127 

Clinton’s  Memorial  of  1816  addressed  to  the  State 
Legislature  may  well  rank  with  Washington’s 
letter  to  Harrison  in  the  documentary  history  of 
American  commercial  development.  It  sums  up 
the  geographical  position  of  New  York  with  re¬ 
ference  to  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Atlantic,  her 
relationship  to  the  West  and  to  Canada,  the  feasi¬ 
bility  of  the  proposed  route  from  an  engineering 
standpoint,  the  timeliness  of  the  moment  for  such 
a  work  of  improvement,  the  value  that  the  canal 
would  give  to  the  state  lands  of  the  interior,  and 
the  trade  that  it  would  bring  to  the  towns  along 
its  pathway. 

The  Erie  Canal  was  born  in  the  Act  of  April  14, 
1817,  but  the  decision  of  the  Council  of  Revision, 
which  held  the  power  of  veto,  was  in  doubt.  An 
anecdote  related  by  Judge  Platt  tends  to  prove 
that  fear  of  another  war  with  England  was  the 
straw  that  broke  the  camel’s  back  of  opposition. 
Acting-Governor  Taylor,  Chief  Justice  Thomp¬ 
son,  Chancellor  Kent,  Judge  Yates,  and  Judge 
Platt  composed  the  Council.  The  two  first  named 
were  open  opponents  of  the  measure;  Kent,  Yates, 
and  Platt  were  warm  advocates  of  the  project, 
but  one  of  them  doubted  if  the  time  was  ripe  to 
undertake  it. 


128  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

Taylor  opposed  the  canal  on  the  ground  that 
the  late  treaty  with  England  was  a  mere  truce  and 
that  the  resources  of  the  State  should  be  husbanded 
against  renewed  war. 

“Do  you  think  so.  Sir?”  Chancellor  Kent  is  said 
to  have  asked  the  Governor. 

“Yes,  Sir,”  was  the  reported  reply.  “England 
will  never  forgive  us  for  our  victories,  and,  my 
word  for  it,  we  shall  have  another  war  with  her 
within  two  years.” 

The  Chancellor  rose  to  his  feet  with  determina¬ 
tion  and  sealed  the  fate  of  the  great  enterprise  in  a 
word. 

“If  we  must  have  war,”  he  exclaimed,  “I 
am  in  favor  of  the  canal  and  I  cast  my  vote  for 
this  bill.” 

On  July  4,  1817,  work  was  formally  inaugurated 
at  Rome  with  simple  ceremonies.  Thus  the  year 
1817  was  marked  by  three  great  undertakings:  the 
navigation  of  the  Mississippi  River  upstream  and 
down  by  steamboats,  the  opening  of  the  national 
road  across  the  Alleghany  Mountains,  and  the  be¬ 
ginning  of  the  Erie  Canal.  No  single  year  in  the 
early  history  of  the  United  States  witnessed  three 
such  important  events  in  the  material  progress  of 
the  country. 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES  129 

What  days  the  ancient  “Long  House  of  the  Iro¬ 
quois  ”  now  saw!  The  engineers  of  the  Cumber- 
land  Road,  now  nearing  the  Ohio  River,  had  en¬ 
joyed  the  advantage  of  many  precedents  and 
examples;  but  the  Commissioners  of  the  Erie 
Canal  had  been  able  to  study  only  such  crude 
examples  of  canal-building  as  America  then  af¬ 
forded.  Never  on  any  continent  had  such  an  in¬ 
accessible  region  been  pierced  by  such  a  highway. 
The  total  length  of  the  whole  network  of  canals  in 
Great  Britain  did  not  equal  that  of  the  waterway 
which  the  New  Yorkers  now  undertook  to  build. 
The  lack  of  roads,  materials,  vehicles,  methods  of 
drilling  and  efficient  business  systems  was  over¬ 
come  by  sheer  patience  and  perseverance  in  ex¬ 
periment.  The  frozen  winter  roads  saved  the  day 
by  making  it  possible  to  accumulate  a  proper 
supply  of  provisions  and  materials.  As  tools  of 
construction,  the  plough  and  scraper  with  their 
greater  capacity  for  work  soon  supplanted  the 
shovel  and  the  wheelbarrow,  which  had  been  the 
chief  implements  for  such  construction  in  Europe. 
Strange  new  machinery  born  of  Mother  Necessity 
was  now  heard  groaning  in  the  dark  swamps  of 
New  York.  These  giants,  worked  by  means  of  a 
cable,  wheel,  and  endless  screw,  were  made  to  hoist 


130  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


green  stumps  bodily  from  the  ground  and,  without 
the  use  of  axe,  to  lay  trees  prostrate,  root  and 
branch.  A  new  plough  was  fashioned  with  which  a 
yoke  of  oxen  could  cut  roots  two  inches  in  thickness 
well  beneath  the  surface  of  the  ground. 

Handicaps  of  various  sorts  wore  the  patience  of 
commissioners,  engineers,  and  contractors.  Lack 
of  snow  during  one  winter  all  but  stopped  the  work 
by  cutting  off  the  source  of  supplies.  Pioneer  ail¬ 
ments,  such  as  fever  and  ague,  reaped  great  har¬ 
vests,  incapacitated  more  than  a  thousand  work¬ 
men  at  one  time  and  for  a  brief  while  stopped 
work  completely. 

For  the  most  part,  however,  work  was  carried  on 
simultaneously  on  all  the  three  great  links  or  sec¬ 
tions  into  which  the  enterprise  was  divided.  Local 
contractors  were  given  preference  by  the  com¬ 
missioners,  and  three-fourths  of  the  work  was  done 
by  natives  of  the  State.  Forward  up  the  Mohawk 
by  Schenectady  and  Utica  to  Rome,  thence  bend¬ 
ing  southward  to  Syracuse,  and  from  there  by  way 
of  Clyde,  Lyons,  and  Palmyra,  the  canal  made  its 
way  to  the  giant  viaduct  over  the  Genesee  River 
at  Rochester.  Keeping  close  to  the  summit  level 
on  the  dividing  ridge  between  Lake  Ontario 
streams  and  the  Valley  of  the  Tona wanda,  the  line 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES  131 


ran  to  Lockport,  where  a  series  of  locks  placed  the 
canal  on  the  Lake  Erie  level,  365  miles  from  and 
564  feet  above  Albany.  By  June,  1823,  the  canal 
was  completed  from  Rochester  to  Schenectady;  in 
October  boats  passed  into  the  tidewaters  of  the 
Hudson  at  Albany;  and  in  the  autumn  of  1825  the 
canal  was  formally  opened  by  the  passage  of  a 
triumphant  fleet  from  Lake  Erie  to  New  York  Bay. 
Here  two  kegs  of  lake  water  were  emptied  into  the 
Atlantic,  while  the  Governor  of  the  State  of  New 
York  spoke  these  words: 

This  solemnity,  at  this  place,  on  the  first  arrival  of 
vessels  from  Lake  Erie,  is  intended  to  indicate  and 
commemorate  the  navigable  communication,  which 
has  been  accomplished  between  our  Mediterranean 
Seas  and  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  in  about  eight  years,  to 
the  extent  of  more  than  four  hundred  and  twenty-five 
miles,  by  the  wisdom,  public  spirit,  and  energy  of  the 
people  of  the  State  of  New  York;  and  may  the  God 
of  the  Heavens  and  the  Earth  smile  most  propitiously 
on  this  work,  and  render  it  subservient  to  the  best 
interests  of  the  human  race. 

Throughout  these  last  seven  years,  the  West 
was  subconsciously  getting  ready  to  meet  the  East 
halfway  by  improving  and  extending  her  ^team- 
boat  operations.  Steamboats  were  first  run  on  the 
Great  Lakes  by  enterprising  Buffalo  citizens  who, 


132  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


in  1818,  secured  rights  from  the  Fulton-Livingston 
monopoly  to  build  the  W alk-in-the-Water ,  the  first 
of  the  great  fleet  of  ships  that  now  whiten  the 
inland  seas  of  the  United  States.  Regular  lines  of 
steamboats  were  now  formed  on  the  Ohio  to  con¬ 
nect  with  the  Cumberland  Road  at  Wheeling, 
although  the  steamboat  monopoly  threatened  to 
stifle  the  natural  development  of  transportation  on 
Western  rivers. 

The  completion  of  the  Erie  Canal  —  coupled 
with  the  new  appropriation  by  Congress  for  ex¬ 
tending  the  Cumberland  Road  from  the  Ohio 
River  to  Missouri  and  the  beginning  of  the  Penn¬ 
sylvania  and  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio  canals,  re¬ 
veal  the  importance  of  these  concluding  days  of 
the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  in 
the  annals  of  American  transportation.  Never 
since  that  time  have  men  doubted  the  ability  of 
Americans  to  accomplish  the  physical  domination 
of  their  continent.  With  the  conquest  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies  and  of  the  forests  and  swamps  of  the  “Long 
House”  by  pick  and  plough  and  scraper,  and  the 
mastery  of  the  currents  of  the  Mississippi  by  the 
paddle  wheel,  the  vast  plains  beyond  seemed 
smaller  and  the  Rockies  less  formidable.  Men  now 
looked  forward  confidently,  with  an  optimist  of 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  ALLEGHANIES  133 


these  days,  to  the  time  “when  circulation  and 
association  between  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  and 
the  Mexican  Gulf  shall  be  as  free  and  perfect  as 
they  are  at  this  moment  in  England”  between  the 
extremities  of  that  country.  The  vision  of  a  nation 
closely  linked  by  well-worn  paths  of  commerce  was 
daily  becoming  clearer.  What  further  westward 
progress  was  soon  to  be  made  remains  to  be  seen. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE 

Despite  the  superiority  of  the  new  iron  age  that 
quickly  followed  the  widespreading  canal  move¬ 
ment,  there  was  a  generous  spirit  and  a  chivalry 
in  the  “good  old  days”  of  the  stagecoach,  the 
Conestoga,  and  the  lazy  canal  boat,  which  did  not 
to  an  equal  degree  pervade  the  iron  age  of  the  rail¬ 
road.  When  machinery  takes  the  place  of  human 
brawn  and  patience,  there  is  an  indefinable  eclipse 
of  human  interest.  Somehow,  cogs  and  levers  and 
differentials  do  not  have  the  same  appeal  as  fingers 
and  eyes  and  muscles.  The  old  days  of  coach  and 
canal  boat  had  a  picturesqueness  and  a  comrade¬ 
ship  of  their  own.  In  the  turmoil  and  confusion 
and  odd  mixing  of  every  kind  of  humanity  along  the 
lines  of  travel  in  the  days  of  the  hurtling  coach-and- 
six,  a  friendliness,  a  robust  sympathy,  a  ready  inter¬ 
est  in  the  successful  and  the  unfortunate,  a  knowl¬ 
edge  of  how  the  other  half  lives,  and  a  familiarity 

134 


THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE 


135 


with  men  as  well  as  with  mere  places,  was  common 
to  all  who  took  the  road.  As  Thackeray  so  vividly 
describes  it : 

The  land  rang  yet  with  the  tooting  horns  and  rattling 
teams  of  mail-coaches;  a  gay  sight  was  the  road  in 
those  days,  before  steam-engines  arose  and  flung  its 
hostelry  and  chivalry  over.  To  travel  in  coaches,  to 
know  coachmen  and  guards,  to  be  familiar  with  inns 
along  the  road,  to  laugh  with  the  jolly  hostess  in  the 
bar,  to  chuck  the  pretty  chamber-maid  under  the  chin, 
were  the  delight  of  men  who  were  young  not  very  long 
ago.  The  road  was  an  institution,  the  ring  was  an 
institution.  Men  rallied  around  them;  and,  not  with¬ 
out  a  kind  of  conservatism  expatiated  on  the  benefits 
with  which  they  endowed  the  country,  and  the  evils 
which  would  occur  when  they  should  be  no  more :  — 
decay  of  British  spirit,  decay  of  manly  pluck,  ruin  of 
the  breed  of  horses,  and  so  forth  and  so  forth.  To  give 
and  take  a  black  eye  was  not  unusual  nor  derogatory  in 
a  gentleman:  to  drive  a  stage-coach  the  enjoyment,  the 
emulation,  of  generous  youth.  Is  there  any  young  fellow 
of  the  present  time,  who  aspires  to  take  the  place  of  a 
stoker?  One  sees  occasionally  in  the  country  a  dismal 
old  drag  with  a  lonely  driver.  Where  are  you,  chariot¬ 
eers?  Where  are  you,  O  rattling  Quicksilver ,  O  swift 
Defiance?  You  are  passed  by  racers  stronger  and  swifter 
than  you.  Your  lamps  are  out,  and  the  music  of  your 
horns  has  died  away. 

Behind  this  change  from  the  older  and  more 
picturesque  days  which  is  thus  lamented  there  lay 


136  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


potent  economic  forces  and  a  strong  commercial 
rivalry  between  different  parts  of  the  country. 
The  Atlantic  States  were  all  rivals  of  each  other, 
reaching  out  by  one  bold  stroke  after  another  across 
forest,  mountain,  and  river  to  the  gigantic  and 
fruitful  West.  Step  after  step  the  inevitable  con¬ 
quest  went  on.  Foremost  in  time  marched  the 
sturdy  pack-horsemen,  blazing  the  way  for  the 
heavier  forces  quietly  biding  their  time  in  the  rear 
—  the  Conestogas,  the  steamboat,  the  canal  boat, 
and,  last  and  greatest  of  them  all,  the  locomotive. 

Through  a  long  preliminary  period  the  principal 
center  of  interest  was  the  Potomac  Valley,  towards 
whose  strategic  head  Virginia  and  Maryland,  by 
river-improvement  and  road-building,  were  direct¬ 
ing  their  commercial  routes  in  amiable  rivalry  for  the 
conquest  of  the  Western  trade.  Suddenly  out  from 
the  southern  region  of  the  Middle  Atlantic  States 
went  the  Cumberland  National  Road  to  the  Ohio. 
New  York  instantly,  in  her  zone,  took  up  the  chal¬ 
lenge  and  thrust  her  great  Erie  Canal  across  to  the 
Great  Lakes .  In  rapid  succession,  Pennsylvania  and 
Maryland  and  Virginia,  eager  not  to  be  outdone  in 
winning  the  struggle  for  Western  trade,  sent  their 
canals  into  the  Alleghanies  toward  the  Ohio. 

It  soon  developed,  however,  that  Baltimore,  both 


THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE  137 


powerful  and  ambitious,  was  seriously  handicapped. 
In  order  to  retain  her  commanding  position  as  the 
metropolis  of  Western  trade  she  was  compelled  to 
resort  to  a  new  and  untried  method  of  transportation 
which  marks  an  era  in  American  history. 

It  seems  plain  that  the  Southern  rivals  of  New 
York  City  —  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  and  Alex¬ 
andria  —  had  relied  for  a  while  on  the  deterring 
effect  of  a  host  of  critics  who  warned  all  men  that  a 
canal  of  such  proportions  as  the  Erie  was  not  prac¬ 
ticable,  that  no  State  could  bear  the  financial  drain 
which  its  construction  would  involve,  that  theories 
which  had  proved  practical  on  a  small  scale  would 
fail  in  so  large  an  undertaking,  that  the  canal  would 
be  clogged  by  floods  or  frozen  up  for  half  of  each 
year,  and  that  commerce  would  ignore  artificial 
courses  and  cling  to  natural  channels.  But  the 
answer  of  the  Empire  State  to  her  rivals  was 
the  homely  but  triumphant  cry  “Low  Bridge!”  — 
the  warning  to  passengers  on  the  decks  of  canal 
boats  as  they  approached  the  numerous  bridges 
which  spanned  the  route.  When  this  cry  passed 
into  a  byword  it  afforded  positive  proof  that  the 
Erie  Canal  traffic  was  firmly  established.  The 
words  rang  in  the  counting-houses  of  Philadel¬ 
phia  and  out  and  along  the  Lancaster  and  the 


138  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Philadelphia-Pittsburgh  turnpikes  —  “Low  Bridge! 
Low  Bridge!”  Pennsylvania  had  granted,  it  has 
been  pointed  out,  that  her  Southern  neighbors 
might  have  their  share  of  the  Ohio  Valley  trade 
but  maintained  that  the  splendid  commerce  of  the 
Great  Lakes  was  her  own  peculiar  heritage.  Men 
of  Baltimore  who  had  dominated  the  energetic 
policy  of  stone-road  building  in  their  State  heard 
this  alarming  challenge  from  the  North.  The  echo 
ran  “Low  Bridge!”  in  the  poor  decaying  locks  of 
the  Potomac  Company  where,  according  to  the  com¬ 
mittee  once  appointed  to  examine  that  enterprise, 
flood-tides  “gave  the  only  navigation  that  was  en¬ 
joyed.”  Were  their  efforts  to  keep  the  Chesapeake 
metropolis  in  the  lead  to  be  set  at  naught? 

There  could  be  but  one  answer  to  the  challenge, 
and  that  was  to  rival  canal  with  canal.  These 
more  southerly  States,  confronted  by  the  towering 
ranges  of  the  Alleghanies  to  the  westward,  showed 
a  courage  which  was  superb,  although,  as  time 
proved  in  the  case  of  Maryland,  they  might  well 
have  taken  more  counsel  of  their  fears.  Pennsyl¬ 
vania  acted  swiftly.  Though  its  western  water¬ 
way  —  the  roaring  Juniata,  which  entered  the 
Susquehanna  near  Harrisburg  —  had  a  drop  from 
head  to  mouth  greater  than  that  of  the  entire  New 


THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE  139 


York  canal,  and,  though  the  mountains  of  the 
Altoona  region  loomed  straight  up  nearly  three 
thousand  feet,  Pennsylvania  overcame  the  low¬ 
lands  by  main  strength  and  the  mountain  peaks  by 
strategy  and  was  sending  canal  boats  from  Phila¬ 
delphia  to  Pittsburgh  within  nine  years  of  the 
completion  of  the  Erie  Canal. 

The  eastern  division  of  the  Pennsylvania  Canal, 
known  as  the  Union  Canal,  from  Reading  on  the 
Schuylkill  to  Middletown  on  the  Susquehanna, 
was  completed  in  1827.  The  Juniata  section  was 
then  driven  on  up  to  Holliday sburg.  Beyond  the 
mountain  barrier,  the  Conemaugh,  the  Xiskimini- 
tas,  and  the  Allegheny  were  followed  to  Pittsburgh. 
But  the  greatest  feat  in  the  whole  enterprise  was 
the  conquest  of  the  mountain  section,  from  Holli- 
daysburg  to  Johnstown.  This  was  accomplished 
by  the  building  of  five  inclined  planes  on  each 
slope,  each  plane  averaging  about  2300  feet  in 
length  and  200  feet  in  height.  Up  or  down  these 
slopes  and  along  the  intermediate  level  sections 
cars  and  giant  cradles  (built  to  be  lowered  into 
locks  where  they  could  take  an  entire  canal  boat 
as  a  load)  were  to  be  hauled  or  lowered  by  horse¬ 
power,  and  later,  by  steam.  After  the  plans  had 
been  drawn  up  by  Sylvester  Welch  and  Moncure 


140  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Robinson,  the  Pennsylvania  Legislature  authorized 
the  work  in  1831,  and  traffic  over  this  aerial  route 
was  begun  in  March,  1834.  In  autumn  of  that 
year,  the  stanch  boat  Hit  or  Miss ,  from  the  Lacka¬ 
wanna  country,  owned  by  Jesse  Crisman  and  cap¬ 
tained  by  Major  Williams,  made  the  journey 
across  the  whole  length  of  the  canal.  It  rested  for 
a  night  on  the  Alleghany  summit  “like  Noah’s 
Ark  on  Ararat,”  wrote  Sherman  Day,  “descended 
the  next  morning  into  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi, 
and  sailed  for  St.  Louis.” 

Well  did  Robert  Stephenson,  the  famous  Eng¬ 
lish  engineer,  say  that,  in  boldness  of  design  and 
difficulty  of  execution,  this  Pennsylvania  scheme 
of  mastering  the  Alleghanies  could  be  compared 
with  no  modem  triumph  short  of  the  feats  per¬ 
formed  at  the  Simplon  Pass  and  Mont  Cenis. 
Before  long  this  line  of  communication  became  a 
very  popular  thoroughfare;  even  Charles  Dickens 
“heartily  enjoyed”  it  —  in  retrospect  —  and  left 
interesting  impressions  of  his  journey  over  it: 

Even  the  running  up,  bare-necked,  at  five  o’clock  in 
the  morning  from  the  tainted  cabin  to  the  dirty  deck; 
scooping  up  the  icy  water,  plunging  one’s  head  into  it, 
and  drawing  it  out,  all  fresh  and  glowing  with  the 
cold;  was  a  good  thing.  The  fast,  brisk  walk  upon  the 
towing-path,  between  that  time  and  breakfast,  when 


THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE  141 


every  vein  and  artery  seemed  to  tingle  with  health; 
the  exquisite  beauty  of  the  opening  day,  when  light 
came  gleaming  off  from  everything;  the  lazy  motion 
of  the  boat,  when  one  lay  idly  on  the  deck,  looking 
through,  rather  than  at,  the  deep  blue  sky;  the  gliding 
on,  at  night,  so  noiselessly,  past  frowning  hills,  sullen 
with  dark  trees,  and  sometimes  angry  in  one  red  burn¬ 
ing  spot  high  up,  where  unseen  men  lay  crouching 
round  a  fire;  the  shining  out  of  the  bright  stars,  un¬ 
disturbed  by  noise  of  wheels  or  steam,  or  any  other 
sound  than  the  liquid  rippling  of  the  water  as  the  boat 
went  on;  all  these  were  pure  delights.1 

Dickens  also  thus  graphically  depicts  the  unique 
experience  of  being  carried  over  the  mountain 
peaks  on  the  aerial  railway: 

There  are  ten  inclined  planes;  five  ascending  and  five 
descending;  the  carriages  are  dragged  up  the  former, 
and  let  slowly  down  the  latter,  by  means  of  stationary 
engines;  the  comparatively  level  spaces  between  be¬ 
ing  traversed,  sometimes  by  horse,  and  sometimes  by 
engine  power,  as  the  case  demands.  Occasionally  the 
rails  are  laid  upon  the  extreme  verge  of  a  giddy  preci¬ 
pice;  and  looking  from  the  carriage  window,  the 
traveler  gazes  sheer  down,  without  a  stone  or  scrap 
of  fence  between,  into  the  mountain  depths  below. 
The  journey  is  very  carefully  made,  however;  only 
two  carriages  traveling  together;  and  while  proper  pre¬ 
cautions  are  taken,  is  not  to  be  dreaded  for  its  dangers. 

It  was  very  pretty  traveling  thus,  at  a  rapid  pace 

1  American  Notes  (Gadshill  Edition),  pp.  180-81. 


142  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


along  the  heights  of  the  mountain  in  a  keen  wind,  to 
look  down  into  a  valley  full  of  light  and  softness; 
catching  glimpses,  through  the  tree-tops,  of  scattered 
cabins;  children  running  to  the  doors;  dogs  bursting 
out  to  bark,  whom  we  could  see  without  hearing; 
terrified  pigs  scampering  homewards;  families  sitting 
out  in  their  rude  gardens;  cows  gazing  upward  with  a 
stupid  indifference;  men  in  their  shirt-sleeves  looking 
on  at  their  unfinished  houses,  planning  out  tomorrow’s 
work;  and  we  riding  onward,  high  above  them,  like  a 
whirl- wind.  It  was  amusing,  too,  when  we  had  dined, 
and  rattled  down  a  steep  pass,  having  no  other  motive 
power  than  the  weight  of  the  carriages  themselves, 
to  see  the  engine  released,  long  after  us,  come  buzzing 
down  alone,  like  a  great  insect,  its  back  of  green  and 
gold  so  shining  in  the  sun,  that  if  it  had  spread  a  pair 
of  wings  and  soared  away,  no  one  would  have  had 
occasion,  as  I  fancied,  for  the  least  surprise.  But  it 
stopped  short  of  us  in  a  very  business-like  manner 
when  we  reached  the  canal;  and,  before  we  left  the 
wharf,  went  panting  up  this  hill  again,  with  the  passen¬ 
gers  who  had  waited  our  arrival  for  the  means  of 
traversing  the  road  by  which  we  had  come.1 

This  Pennsylvania  route  was  likewise  famous  be¬ 
cause  it  included  the  first  tunnel  in  America;  but 
with  the  advance  of  years,  tunnel,  planes,  and 
canal  were  supplanted  by  what  was  to  become  in 
time  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  the  pride  of  the 
State  and  one  of  the  great  highways  of  the  nation. 

1  Op.  cit. 


THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE  143 


In  the  year  before  Pennsylvania  investigated  her 
western  water  route,  a  joint  bill  was  introduced 
into  the  legislatures  of  the  Potomac  Valley  States, 
proposing  a  Potomac  Canal  Company  which  should 
construct  a  Chesapeake  and  Ohio  canal  ^t  the 
expense  of  Maryland,  Virginia,  and  the  District 
of  Columbia.  The  plan  was  of  vital  moment  to 
Alexandria  and  Georgetown  on  the  Potomac,  but 
unless  a  lateral  canal  could  be  built  to  Baltimore, 
that  city  —  which  paid  a  third  of  Maryland’s  taxes 
—  would  be  called  on  to  supply  a  great  sum  to 
benefit  only  her  chief  rivals.  The  bitter  struggle 
which  now  developed  is  one  of  the  most  significant 
in  commercial  history  because  of  its  sequel. 

The  conditions  underlying  this  rivalry  must  not 
be  lost  sight  of.  Baltimore  had  done  more  than 
any  other  Eastern  city  to  ally  herself  with  the 
West  and  to  obtain  its  trade.  She  had  instinctive¬ 
ly  responded  to  every  move  made  by  her  rivals 
in  tha  great  game.  If  Pennsylvania  promoted  a 
Lancaster  Turnpike,  Baltimore  threw  out  her  su¬ 
perb  Baltimore-Beisterstown  boulevard,  though  her 
northern  road  to  Philadelphia  remained  the  slough 
that  Brissot  and  Baily  had  found  it.  If  New  York 
projected  an  Erie  Canal,  Baltimore  successfully 
championed  the  building  of  a  Cumberland  Road 


144  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


by  a  governmental  godmother.  So  thoroughly  and 
quickly,  indeed,  did  she  link  her  system  of  stone 
roads  to  that  great  artery,  that  even  today  many 
well-informed  writers  seem  to  be  under  the  im¬ 
pression  that  the  Cumberland  Road  ran  from  the 
Ohio  to  Washington  and  Baltimore.  Now,  with 
canals  building  to  the  north  of  her  and  canals  to 
the  south  of  her,  what  of  her  prestige  and  future? 

For  the  moment  Baltimore  compromised  by 
agreeing  to  a  Chesapeake  and  Ohio  canal  which, 
by  a  lateral  branch,  should  still  lead  to  her  market 
square.  Her  scheme  embraced  a  vision  of  con¬ 
quest  regal  in  its  sweep,  beyond  that  of  any  rival, 
and  comprehending  two  ideas  worthy  of  the  most 
farseeing  strategist  and  the  most  astute  politician. 
It  called  not  only  for  the  building  of  a  transmon- 
tane  canal  to  the  Ohio  but  also  for  a  connecting 
canal  from  the  Ohio  to  the  Great  Lakes.  Not  only 
would  the  trade  of  the  Northwest  be  secured  by 
this  means  —  for  this  southerly  route  would  not 
be  affected  by  winter  frosts  as  would  those  of 
Pennsylvania  and  New  York  —  but  the  good  god¬ 
mother  at  Washington  would  be  almost  certain  to 
champion  it  and  help  to  build  it  since  the  proposed 
route  was  so  thoroughly  interstate  in  character. 
With  the  backing  of  Maryland,  Virginia,  Western 


THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE  145 


Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  and  probably  several  States 
bordering  the  Inland  Lakes,  government  aid  in 
the  undertaking  seemed  feasible  and  proper. 

Theoretically  the  daring  scheme  captured  the 
admiration  of  all  who  were  to  be  benefited  by  it. 
At  a  great  banquet  at  Washington,  late  in  1823, 
the  project  was  launched.  Adams,  Clay,  and  Cal¬ 
houn  took  the  opportunity  to  ally  themselves  with 
it  by  robustly  declaring  themselves  in  favor  of 
widespread  internal  improvements.  Even  the  god¬ 
mother  smiled  upon  it  for,  following  Monroe’s  rec¬ 
ommendation,  Congress  without  hesitation  voted 
thirty  thousand  dollars  for  the  preliminary  sur¬ 
vey  from  Washington  to  Pittsburgh.  Quickly  the 
Chesapeake  and  Ohio  Canal  Company  and  the  con¬ 
necting  Maryland  Canal  Company  were  formed, 
and  steps  were  taken  to  have  Ohio  promote  an 
Ohio  and  Lake  Erie  Company. 

As  high  as  were  the  hopes  awakened  by  this 
movement,  just  so  deep  was  the  dejection  and 
chagrin  into  which  its  advocates  were  thrown  upon 
receiving  the  report  of  the  engineers  who  made  the 
preliminary  survey.  The  estimated  cost  ran  to¬ 
wards  a  quarter  of  a  billion,  four  times  the  capital 
stock  of  the  company;  and  there  were  not  lacking 
those  who  pointed  out  that  the  Erie  Canal  had  cost 


10 


146  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

more  than  double  the  original  appropriation  made 
for  it. 

The  situation  was  aggravated  for  Baltimore  by 
the  fact  that  Maryland  and  Virginia  were  willing 
to  take  half  a  loaf  if  they  could  not  get  a  whole 
one :  in  other  words,  they  were  willing  to  build  the 
canal  up  the  Potomac  to  Cumberland  and  stop 
there.  Baltimore,  even  if  linked  to  this  partial 
scheme,  would  lose  her  water  connection  with  the 
West,  the  one  prized  asset  which  the  project  had 
held  out,  and  her  Potomac  Valley  rivals  would,  on 
this  contracted  plan,  be  in  a  particularly  advan¬ 
tageous  position  to  surpass  her.  But  the  last  blow 
was  yet  to  come.  Engineers  reported  that  a  lat¬ 
eral  canal  connecting  the  Potomac  and  Chesa¬ 
peake  Bay  was  not  feasible.  It  was  consequently 
of  little  moment  whether  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio 
Canal  could  be  built  across  the  Alleghanies  or  not, 
for,  even  if  it  could  have  been  carried  through  the 
Great  Plains  or  to  the  Pacific,  Baltimore  was,  for 
topographical  reasons,  out  of  the  running. 

The  men  of  Baltimore  now  gave  one  of  the  most 
striking  illustrations  of  spirit  and  pluck  ever  ex¬ 
hibited  by  the  people  of  any  city.  They  refused 
to  accept  defeat.  If  engineering  science  held  a 
means  of  overcoming  the  natural  disadvantages  of 


THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE  147 


their  position,  they  were  determined  to  adopt  that 
means,  come  what  would  of  hardship,  difficulty, 
and  expenditure.  If  roads  and  canals  would  not 
serve  the  city  on  the  Chesapeake,  what  of  the  rail¬ 
road  on  which  so  many  experiments  were  being 
made  in  England? 

The  idea  of  controlling  the  trade  of  the  West 

by  railroads  was  not  new.  As  early  as  February, 

* 

1825,  certain  astute  Pennsylvanians  had  advocated 
building  a  railroad  to  Pittsburgh  instead  of  a  canal, 
and  in  a  memorial  to  the  Legislature  they  had  set 
forth  the  theory  that  a  railroad  could  be  built  in 
one-third  of  the  time  and  could  be  operated  with 
one-third  of  the  number  of  employees  required  by 
a  canal,  that  it  would  never  be  frozen,  and  that 
its  cost  of  construction  would  be  less.  But  these 
arguments  did  not  influence  the  majority,  who  felt 
that  to  follow  the  line  of  least  resistance  and  to  do 
as  others  had  done  would  involve  the  least  hazard. 
But  Baltimore,  with  her  back  against  the  wall,  did 
not  have  the  alternative  of  a  canal.  It  was  a  leap 
into  the  unknown  for  her  or  commercial  stagnation. 

It  is  regrettable  that,  as  Baltimore  began  to 
break  this  fresh  track,  she  should  have  had  po¬ 
litical  as  well  as  physical  and  mechanical  obsta¬ 
cles  to  overcome.  The  conquest  of  the  natural 


148  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


difficulties  alone  required  superhuman  effort  and 
endurance.  But  Baltimore  had  also  to  fight  a 
miserable  internecine  warfare  in  her  own  State, 
for  Maryland  immediately  subscribed  half  a  mil¬ 
lion  to  the  canal  as  well  as  to  the  newly  formed 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad.  In  rival  pageants, 
both  companies  broke  ground  on  July  4,  1828,  and 
the  race  to  the  Ohio  was  on.  The  canal  company 
clung  doggedly  to  the  idle  belief  that  their  enter¬ 
prise  was  still  of  continental  proportions,  since  it 
would  connect  at  Cumberland  with  the  Cumber¬ 
land  Road.  This  exaggerated  estimate  of  the  im¬ 
portance  of  the  undertaking  shines  out  in  the 
pompous  words  of  President  Mercer,  at  the  time 
when  construction  was  begun: 

There  are  moments  in  the  progress  of  time,  which  are 
counters  of  whole  ages.  There  are  events,  the  monu¬ 
ments  of  which,  surviving  every  other  memorial  of 
human  existence,  eternize  the  nation  to  whose  history 
they  belong,  after  all  other  vestiges  of  its  glory  have 
disappeared  from  the  globe.  At  such  a  moment  have 
we  now  arrived. 

This  oracular  language  lacks  the  simple  but  win¬ 
ning  straightforwardness  of  the  words  which  Direc- 
tor  Morris  uttered  on  the  same  day  near  Baltimore 


THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE  149 


and  which  prove  how  distinctly  Western  the  new 
railway  project  was  held  to  be: 

We  are  about  opening  a  channel  through  which  the 
commerce  of  the  mighty  country  beyond  the  Alle¬ 
gheny  must  seek  the  ocean  —  we  are  about  affording 
facilities  of  intercourse  between  the  East  and  West, 
which  will  bind  the  one  more  closely  to  the  other, 
beyond  the  power  of  an  increased  population  or 
sectional  differences  to  disunite. 

The  difficulties  which  faced  the  Baltimore  en¬ 
thusiasts  in  their  task  of  keeping  their  city  “on 
the  map”  would  have  daunted  men  of  less  heroic 
mold.  Every  conceivable  trial  and  test  which 
nature  and  machinery  could  seemingly  devise  was 
a  part  of  their  day’s  work  for  twelve  years  — 
struggles  with  grades,  locomotives,  rails,  cars.  As 
Rumsey,  Fitch,  and  Fulton  in  their  experiments 
with  boats  had  floundered  despondently  with  end¬ 
less  chains,  oars,  paddles,  duck’s  feet,  so  now 
Thomas  and  Brown  in  their  efforts  to  make  the 
railroad  effective  wandered  in  a  maze  of  difficulties 
testing  out  such  absurd  and  impossible  ideas  as 
cars  propelled  by  sails  and  cars  operated  by  horse 
treadmills.  By  May,  1830,  however,  cars  on  rails, 
running  by  “brigades”  and  drawn  by  horses,  were 
in  operation  in  America.  It  was  only  in  this  year 


150  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


that  in  England  locomotives  were  used  with  any 
marked  success  on  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester 
Railroad;  yet  in  August  of  this  year  Peter  Cooper’s 
engine,  Tom  Thumb,  built  in  Baltimore  in  1829, 
traversed  the  twelve  miles  between  that  city  and 
Ellicott’s  Mills  in  seventy-two  minutes.  Steel 
springs  came  in  1832,  together  with  car  wheels  of 
cylindrical  and  conical  section  which  made  it  easier 
to  turn  curves. 

The  railroad  was  just  beginning  to  master  its 
mechanical  problems  when  a  new  obstacle  con¬ 
fronted  it  in  the  Potomac  Valley.  It  could  not 
cross  Maryland  to  the  Cumberland  mountain 
gateway  unless  it  could  follow  the  Potomac.  But 
its  rival,  the  canal,  had  inherited  from  the  old 
Potomac  Company  the  only  earthly  asset  it  pos¬ 
sessed  of  any  value  —  the  right  of  way  up  the 
Maryland  shore.  Five  years  of  quarreling  now  en¬ 
sued,  and  the  contest,  though  it  may  not  have  seri¬ 
ously  delayed  either  enterprise,  aroused  much  bit¬ 
terness  and  involved  the  usual  train  of  lawsuits 
and  injunctions. 

In  1833  the  canal  company  yielded  the  railroad 
a  right  of  way  through  the  Point  of  Rocks  —  the 
Potomac  chasm  through  the  Blue  Ridge  wall, 
just  below  Harper’s  Ferry  —  on  condition  that  the 


THE  DAWN  OP  THE  IRON  AGE  151 


railroad  should  not  build  beyond  Harper’s  Ferry 
until  the  canal  was  completed  to  Cumberland.  But 
probably  nothing .  but  the  financial  helplessness 
of  the  canal  company  could  have  brought  a  solu¬ 
tion  satisfactory  to  all  concerned.  A  settlement  of 
the  long  quarrel  by  compromise  was  the  price  paid 
for  state  aid,  and,  in  1835  Maryland  subsidized  to  a 

large  degree  both  canal  and  railroad  by  her  famous 

% 

eight  million  dollar  bill.  The  railroad  received 
three  millions  from  the  State,  and  the  city  of  Balti¬ 
more  was  permitted  to  subscribe  an  equal  amount 
of  stock.  With  this  support  and  a  free  right  of  way, 
the  railroad  pushed  on  up  the  Potomac.  Though 
delayed  by  the  financial  disasters  of  1837,  in  1842  it 
was  at  Hancock;  in  1851,  at  Piedmont;  in  1852,  at 
Fairmont;  and  the  next  year  it  reached  the  Ohio 
River  at  Wheeling. 

Spurred  by  the  enterprise  shown  by  these  South¬ 
erners,  Pennsylvania  and  New  York  now  took  im¬ 
mediate  steps  to  parallel  their  own  canals  by  rail¬ 
ways.  The  line  of  the  Union  Canal  in  Pennsylvania 
was  paralleled  by  a  railroad  in  1834,  the  same  year 
in  which  the  Allegheny  Portage  Railway  was  con¬ 
structed.  New  York  lines  reached  Buffalo  in  1842. 
The  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  which  was  incorporated 
in  1846,  was  completed  to  Pittsburgh  in  1854. 


152  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


It  is  thus  obvious  that,  with  the  completion  of 
these  lines  and  the  building  of  the  Chesapeake  and 
Ohio  Railway  through  the  “ Sapphire  Country” 
of  the  Southern  Alleghanies,  the  new  railway  era 
pursued  its  paths  of  conquest  through  the  very 
same  mountain  passageways  that  had  been  previ¬ 
ously  used  by  pack-horseman  and  Conestoga  and, 
in  three  instances  out  of  four,  by  the  canal  boat. 
If  one  motors  today  in  the  Juniata  Valley  in 
Pennsylvania,  he  can  survey  near  Newport  a  scene 
full  of  meaning  to  one  who  has  a  taste  for  history. 
Traveling  along  the  heights  on  the  highway  that 
was  once  the  red  man’s  trail,  he  can  enjoy  &  wide 
prospect  from  this  vantage  point.  Deep  in  the 
valley  glitters  the  little  Juniata,  route  of  the  an¬ 
cient  canoe  and  the  blundering  barge.  Beside  it 
lies  a  long  lagoon,  an  abandoned  portion  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Canal.  Beside  this  again,  as  though 
some  monster  had  passed  leaving  a  track  clear  of 
trees,  stretches  the  right  of  way  of  the  first  “Penn¬ 
sylvania,”  and  a  little  nearer  swings  the  magnifi¬ 
cent  double- tracked  bed  of  the  railroad  of  today. 
Between  these  lines  of  travel  may  be  read  the 
history  of  the  past  two  centuries  of  American  com¬ 
merce,  for  the  vital  factors  in  the  development  of  the 
nation  have  been  the  evolution  of  transportation 


THE  DAWN  OF  THE  IRON  AGE  153 


and  its  manifold  and  far-reaching  influence  upon 
the  expansion  of  population  and  commerce  and 
upon  the  rise  of  new  industries. 

Thus  all  the  rivals  in  the  great  contest  for  the 
trade  of  the  West  speedily  reached  their  goal.  New 
York  with  the  Erie  and  the  New  York  Central,  and 
Pennsylvania  and  Maryland  with  the  Pennsylvania 
and  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio.  But  what  of  this 
West  for  whose  commerce  the  great  struggle  was 
being  waged?  When  the  railheads  of  these  eager 
Atlantic  promoters  were  laid  down  at  Buffalo  on 
Lake  Erie  and  at  Pittsburgh  on  the  Ohio  they 
looked  out  on  a  new  world.  The  centaurs  of  the 
Western  rivers  were  no  less  things  of  the  far  past 
than  the  tinkling  bells  borne  by  the  ancient  ponies 
of  the  pack-horse  trade.  The  sons  of  this  new  West 
had  their  eyes  riveted  on  the  commerce  of  the  Great 
Lakes  and  the  Mississippi  Valley.  With  road, 
canal,  steamboat,  and  railway,  they  were  renew¬ 
ing  the  struggle  of  their  fathers  but  for  prizes 
greater  than  their  fathers  ever  knew. 

New  York  again  proved  the  favored  State.  Her 
Mohawk  pathway  gave  her  easiest  access  to  the 
West  and  here,  at  her  back  door  on  the  Niagara 
frontier,  lay  her  path  by  way  of  the  Great  Lakes  to 
the  North  and  the  Northwest. 


CHAPTER  X 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES 

As  one  stands  in  imagination  at  the  early  railheads 
of  the  West  —  on  the  Ohio  River  at  the  end  of  the 
Cumberland  Road,  or  at  Buffalo,  the  terminus  of 
the  Erie  Canal  —  the  vision  which  Washington 
caught  breaks  upon  him  and  the  dream  of  a  nation 
made  strong  by  trans-Alleghany  routes  of  com¬ 
merce.  Link  by  link  the  great  interior  is  being 
connected  with  the  sea.  Behind  him  all  lines  of 
transportation  lead  eastward  to  the  cities  of  the 
coast.  Before  him  lies  the  giant  valley  where  the 
Father  of  Waters  throws  out  his  two  splendid 
arms,  the  Ohio  and  the  Missouri,  one  reaching 
to  the  Alleghanies  and  the  other  to  the  Rockies. 
Northward,  at  the  end  of  the  Erie  Canal,  lies  the 

l, 

empire  of  the  Great  Lakes,  inland  seas  that  wash 
the  shores  of  a  Northland  having  a  coastline  longer 
than  that  of  the  Atlantic  from  Maine  to  Mexico. 

Ships  and  conditions  of  navigation  were  much 

154 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  155 

the  same  on  the  lakes  as  on  the  ocean.  It  was 
therefore  possible  to  imagine  the  rise  of  a  coasting 
trade  between  Illinois  and  Ohio  as  profitable  as 
that  between  Massachusetts  and  New  York.  Yet 
the  older  colonies  on  the  Atlantic  had  an  outlet  for 
trade,  whereas  the  Great  Lakes  had  none  for  craft 
of  any  size,  since  their  northern  shores  lay  beyond 
the  international  boundary.  If  there  had  been 
danger  from  Spain  in  the  Southwest,  what  of  the 
danger  of  Canada’s  control  of  the  St.  Lawrence 
River  and  of  the  trade  of  the  Northwest  through 
the  Welland  Canal  which  was  to  join  Lake  Ontario 
to  Lake  Erie?  But  in  those  days  the  possibility  of 
Canadian  rivalry  was  not  treated  with  great  serious¬ 
ness,  and  many  men  failed  to  see  that  the  West  was 
soon  to  contain  a  very  large  population.  The  edi¬ 
tor  of  a  newspaper  at  Munroe,  New  York,  com¬ 
menting  in  1827  on  a  proposed  canal  to  connect 
Lake  Erie  with  the  Mississippi  by  way  of  the  Ohio, 
believed  that  the  rate  of  Western  development  was 
such  that  this  waterway  could  be  expected  only 
“some  hundred  of  years  hence.”  Even  so  gifted 
a  man  as  Henry  Clay  spoke  of  the  proposed  canal 
between  Lake  Michigan  and  Lake  Superior  in  1825 
as  one  relating  to  a  region  beyond  the  pale  of  civili¬ 
zation  “if  not  in  the  moon.”  Yet  in  twenty -five 


156  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


years  Michigan,  which  had  numbered  one  thousand 
inhabitants  in  1S12,  had  gained  two  hundredfold, 
and  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois  had  their  hundreds 
of  thousands  who  were  clamoring  for  ways  and 
means  of  sending  their  surplus  products  to  market. 

Early  in  the  century  representatives  of  the  Ful- 
t on-Livings ton  monopoly  were  at  the  shores  of 
Lake  Ontario  to  prove  that  their  steamboats  could 
master  the  waves  of  the  inland  sea  and  serve  com¬ 
merce  there  as  well  as  in  tidewater  rivers.  True, 
the  luckless  Ontario,  built  in  1817  at  Sackett’s  Har¬ 
bor,  proved  unsea  worthy  when  the  waves  lifted  the 
shaft  of  her  paddle  wheels  off  their  bearings  and 
caused  them  to  demolish  the  wooden  covering 
built  for  their  protection;  but  the  Walk-in-the- 
Water,  completed  at  Black  Rock  (Buffalo)  in 
August,  1818,  plied  successfully  as  far  as  Mackinac 
Island  until  her  destruction  three  years  later.  Her 
engines  were  then  inherited  by  the  Superior  of 
stronger  build,  and  with  the  launching  of  such 
boats  as  the  Niagara ,  the  Henry  Clay ,  and  the 
Pioneer ,  the  fleet  builders  of  Buffalo,  Cleveland, 
and  Detroit  proved  themselves  not  unworthy 
fellow-countrymen  of  the  old  seafarers  of  Salem 
and  Philadelphia. 

But  how  were  cargoes  to  reach  these  vessels 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  157 


from  the  vast  regions  beyond  the  Great  Lakes? 
Those  thousands  of  settlers  who  poured  into  the 
Northwest  had  cargoes  ready  to  fill  every  manner 
of  craft  in  so  short  a  space  of  time  that  it  seems  as 
if  they  must  have  resorted  to  arts  of  necromancy. 
It  was  not  magic,  however,  but  perseverance  that 
had  triumphed.  The  story  of  the  creating  of  the 
main  lakeward-reaching  canals  is  long  and  involved. 
A  period  of  agitation  and  campaigning  preceded 
every  such  undertaking;  and  when  construction 
was  once  begun,  financial  woes  usually  brought  dis¬ 
appointing  delays.  TVhen  a  canal  was  completed 
after  many  vicissitudes  and  doubts,  traffic  over¬ 
whelmed  every  method  provided  to  handle  it: 
locks  proved  altogether  too  small;  boats  were  in¬ 
adequate;  wharfs  became  congested;  blockades 
which  occurred  at  locks  entailed  long  delay.  In 
the  end  onlv  lines  and  double  lines  of  steel  rails 

t / 

could  solve  the  problem  of  rapid  and  adequate 
transportation,  but  the  story  of  the  railroad 
builders  is  told  elsewhere.1 

Ohio  and  Illinois  caught  the  canal  fever  even 
before  the  Erie  Canal  was  completed,  and  the 
Ohio  Canal  and  the  Illinois-Michigan  Canal  saw 

1  See  The  Railroad  Builders,  by  John  Moody  (in  The  Chronicle*  of 
America). 


158  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


preliminary  surveying  done  in  1822  and  1824  re¬ 
spectively.  Ohio  particularly  had  cause  to  seek  a 
northern  outlet  to  Eastern  markets  by  way  of  Lake 
Erie.  The  valleys  of  the  Muskingum,  Scioto,  and 
Miami  rivers  were  producing  wheat  in  large  quan¬ 
tities  as  early  as  1802,  when  Ohio  was  admitted 
to  the  Union.  Flour  which  brought  $3.50  a  barrel 
in  Cincinnati  was  worth  $8  in  New  York.  There 
were  difficulties  in  the  way  of  transportation.  Some¬ 
times  ice  prevented  produce  and  merchandise  from 
descending  the  Ohio  to  Cincinnati.  At  other  times 
merchants  of  that  city  had  as  many  as  a  hun¬ 
dred  thousand  barrels  awaiting  a  rise  in  the  river 
which  would  make  it  possible  for  boats  to  go  over 
the  falls  at  Louisville.  As  these  conditions  in¬ 
volved  a  delay  which  often  seemed  intolerable,  the 
project  to  build  canals  to  Lake  Erie  met  with  gener¬ 
ous  acclaim.  A  northward  route,  though  it  might 
be  blocked  by  ice  for  a  few  months  each  winter,  had 
an  additional  value  in  the  eyes  of  numerous  mer¬ 
chants  whose  wheat,  sent  in  bulk  to  New  Orleans, 
had  soured  either  in  the  long  delay  at  Louisville  or 
in  the  semi-tropical  heat  of  the  Southern  port. 

The  Ohio  Legislature  in  1822  authorized  the  sur¬ 
vey  of  all  possible  routes  for  canals  which  would 
give  Ohio  an  outlet  for  its  produce  on  Lake  Erie. 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  159 

The  three  wheat  zones  which  have  been  mentioned 
were  favored  in  the  proposed  construction  of  two 
canals  which,  together,  should  satisfy  the  need  of 
increased  transportation:  the  Ohio  Canal  to  con¬ 
nect  Portsmouth  on  the  Ohio  River  with  Cleveland 
on  Lake  Erie  and  to  traverse  the  richest  parts  of 
the  Scioto  and  Muskingum  valleys,  and  to  the 
west  the  Miami  Canal  to  pierce  the  fruitful  Miami 
and  Maumee  valleys  and  join  Cincinnati  with 
Toledo,  De  Witt  Clinton,  the  presiding  genius  of 
the  Erie  Canal,  was  invited  to  Ohio  to  play  god¬ 
father  to  these  northward  arteries  which  should 
ultimately  swell  the  profits  of  the  commission 
merchants  of  New  York  City,  and  amid  the  cheers 
of  thousands  he  lifted  the  first  spadefuls  of  earth 
in  each  undertaking. 

The  Ohio  Canal,  which  was  opened  in  1833,  had 
a  marked  effect  upon  the  commerce  of  Lake  Erie. 
Before  that  date  the  largest  amount  of  wheat  ob¬ 
tained  from  Cleveland  by  a  Buffalo  firm  had  been  a 
thousand  bushels;  but  in  the  first  year  of  its  opera¬ 
tion  the  Ohio  Canal  brought  to  the  village  of  Cleve¬ 
land  over  a  quarter  of  a  million  bushels  of  wheat, 
fifty  thousand  barrels  of  flour,  and  over  a  million 
pounds  of  butter  and  lard.  In  return,  the  markets 
of  the  world  sent  into  Ohio  by  canal  in  this  same 


160  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


year  thirty  thousand  barrels  of  salt  and  above  five 
million  pounds  of  general  merchandise. 

Ever  since  the  time  when  the  Erie  Canal  was 
begun,  Canadian  statesmen  had  been  alive  to  the 
strong  bid  New  York  was  making  for  the  trade  of 
the  Great  Lakes.  Their  answer  to  the  Erie  Canal 
was  the  Welland  Canal,  built  between  1824  and 
1832  and  connecting  Lake  Erie  with  Lake  Ontario 
by  a  series  of  twenty-seven  locks  with  a  drop  of 
three  hundred  feet  in  twenty-six  miles.  This  un¬ 
dertaking  prepared  the  way  for  the  subsequent 
opening  of  the  St.  Lawrence  canal  system  (183 
miles)  and  of  the  Rideau  system  by  way  of  the 
Ottawa  River  (246  miles).  There  was  thus  pro¬ 
vided  an  ocean  outlet  to  the  north,  although  it 
was  not  until  1856  that  an  American  vessel  reached 
London  by  way  of  the  St.  Lawrence. 

With  the  Hudson  and  the  St.  Lawrence  in  the 
East  thus  competing  for  the  trade  of  the  Great 
Lakes,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  call  of  the 
Mississippi  for  improved  highways  was  presently 
heard.  From  the  period  of  the  War  of  1812  on¬ 
ward  the  position  of  the  Mississippi  River  in  rela¬ 
tion  to  Lake  Michigan  was  often  referred  to  as 
holding  possibilities  of  great  importance  in  the 
development  of  Western  commerce.  Already  the 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  161 


old  portage-path  links  between  the  Fox  and  Wis¬ 
consin  and  the  Chicago  and  Illinois  rivers  had  been 
worn  deep  by  the  fur  traders  of  many  generations, 
and  with  the  dawning  of  the  new  era  enthusiasts  of 
Illinois  were  pointing  out  the  strategic  position  of 
the  latter  route  for  a  great  trade  between  Lake 
Michigan  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  Thus  the  wave 
of  enthusiasm  for  canal  construction  that  had 
swept  New  York  and  Ohio  now  reached  Indiana 
and  Illinois.  Indian  ownership  of  land  in  the 
latter  State  for  a  moment  seemed  to  block  the  pro¬ 
motion  of  the  proposed  Illinois  and  Michigan  Canal, 
but  a  handsome  grant  of  a  quarter  of  a  million 
acres  by  the  Federal  Government  in  1827  came  as 
a  signal  recognition  of  the  growing  importance  of 
the  Northwest;  and  an  appropriation  for  the  light¬ 
ing  and  improving  of  the  harbor  of  the  little  village 
of  Chicago  was  hailed  by  ardent  promoters  as  sure 
proof  that  the  wedding  of  Lake  Michigan  and  the 
Mississippi  was  but  a  matter  of  months. 

All  the  difficulties  encountered  by  the  advocates 
of  earlier  works  of  this  character,  in  the  valleys 
of  the  Potomac,  the  Susquehanna,  and  the  Mo¬ 
hawk,  were  the  portion  of  these  dogged  promoters 
of  Illinois.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  there  were  rival 
routes  and  methods  of  construction,  opposition  of 


IX 


162  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


jealous  sections  not  immediately  benefited,  esti¬ 
mates  which  had  to  be  reconsidered  and  aug¬ 
mented,  and  so  on.  The  land  grants  pledged  to 
pay  the  bonds  were  at  first  of  small  value,  and  their 
advance  in  price  depended  on  the  success  of  the 
canal  itself,  which  could  not  be  built  —  unless  the 
State  underwrote  the  whole  enterprise — if  the  lands 
were  not  worth  the  bonds.  Thus  the  argument 
ran  in  a  circle,  and  no  one  could  foresee  the  splen¬ 
did  traffic  and  receipts  from  tolls  that  would  result 
from  the  completed  canal. 

The  commissioners  in  charge  of  the  project  per¬ 
formed  one  interesting  service  in  these  early  days 
by  putting  Chicago  on  the  map;  but  the  two  termi¬ 
nals,  Ottawa  on  the  Illinois  and  Chicago  on  Lake 
Michigan  —  both  plotted  in  1830  —  were  very 
largely  figures  of  speech  at  that  time.  The  day  of 
miracles  was  at  hand,  however,  for  the  little  town 
of  one  hundred  people  at  the  foot  of  Lake  Michigan. 
The  purchase  of  the  lands  of  the  Potawatomies,  the 
Black  Hawk  War  in  1832,  which  brought  steam¬ 
boats  to  Chicago  for  the  first  time,  and  the  deci¬ 
sion  of  Illinois  in  1836  to  pledge  her  good  name  in 
favor  of  the  Illinois  and  Michigan  Canal  made 
Chicago  a  city  of  four  thousand  people  by  the 
panic  year  of  1837.  So  absorbed  were  these  Chicago 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  163 


folk  in  the  building  of  their  canal  and  in  wrest¬ 
ing  from  their  lake  firm  foothold  for  a  city  (re¬ 
claiming  four  hundred  feet  of  lake  bed  in  two  years) 
that  the  panic  affected  their  town  less  than  it  did 
many  a  rival.  Although  the  canal  enterprise  came 
to  an  ominous  pause  in  1842,  after  the  expenditure 
of  five  millions,  the  pledge  of  the  State  stood 
the  enterprise  in  good  stead.  Local  financiers,  to¬ 
gether  with  New  York  and  Boston  promoters,  ad¬ 
vanced  about  a  quarter  of  a  million,  while  French 
and  English  bankers,  notably  Baring  Brothers, 
contributed  about  three-quarters  of  a  million. 
With  this  assistance  the  work  was  carried  to  a 
successful  ending.  On  April  10, 1848,  the  first  boat 
passed  over  the  ninety-mile  route  from  Chicago  to 
Ottawa,  and  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Mississippi 
Basin  were  united  bv  this  Erie  Canal  of  the  West. 
Though  its  days  of  greatest  value  were  soon  over, 
no  one  can  exaggerate  the  importance  of  this  water¬ 
way  in  the  growth  and  prosperity  of  Chicago  be¬ 
tween  1848  and  1860.  By  1857  Chicago  was  send¬ 
ing  north  and  south  annually  by  boat  over  twenty 
million  bushels  of  wheat  and  corn. 

The  awakening  of  the  lands  behind  Lake  Erie, 
Lake  Huron,  and  Lake  Michigan  brought  forth  in¬ 
numerable  demands  for  roads,  canals,  and  railways 


164  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


to  the  ports  of  Buffalo,  Cleveland,  Toledo,  De¬ 
troit,  Milwaukee,  and  Chicago.  There  were  ac¬ 
tually  hundreds  of  these  enterprises  undertaken. 
The  development  of  the  land  behind  Lake  Superior 
was  particularly  spectacular  and  important,  not 
only  because  of  its  general  effect  on  the  industrial 
world  but  also  because  out  of  it  came  the  St. 
Mary’s  River  Ship  Canal.  Nowhere  in  the  zone 
of  the  Great  Lakes  has  any  region  produced  such 
unexpected  changes  in  American  industrial  and 
commercial  life  as  did  the  region  of  Michigan, 
Wisconsin,  and  Minnesota  contributory  to  Lake 
Superior.  If,  as  the  story  goes,  Benjamin  Frank¬ 
lin  said,  when  he  drew  at  Paris  the  international 
boundary  line  through  Lake  Superior,  that  this  was 
his  greatest  service  to  America,  he  did  not  exagger¬ 
ate.  The  line  running  north  of  Isle  Royale  and 
thence  to  the  Lake  of  the  Woods  gave  the  United 
States  the  lion’s  share  of  that  great  inland  seaboard 
and  the  inestimably  rich  deposits  of  copper  and  iron 
that  have  revolutionized  American  industry. 

From  earliest  days  rumors  of  deposits  of  bright 
copper  in  the  land  behind  Lake  Superior  had  been 
reported  by  Indians  to  fur  traders  who  in  turn  had 
passed  the  story  on  to  fur  company  agents  and  thus 
to  the  outside  world.  As  a  result  of  her  “Toledo 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  165 


War  ” —  as  her  boundary  dispute  was  called  — 
Michigan  had  reluctantly  accepted  the  northern 
peninsula  lying  between  Lake  Superior  and  Lake 
Michigan  in  lieu  of  the  strip  of  Ohio  territory  which 
she  believed  to  be  hers.  If  Michigan  felt  that  she 
had  lost  by  this  compromise,  her  state  geologist, 
Douglass  Houghton,  soon  found  a  splendid  jewel 
in  the  toad’s  head  of  defeat,  for  the  report  of  his 
survey  of  1840  confirmed  the  story  of  the  existence 
of  large  copper  deposits,  and  the  first  rush  to  El 
Dorado  followed.  Amid  the  usual  chaos,  conflict, 
and  failure  incident  to  such  stampedes,  order  and 
system  at  last  triumphed  and  the  richest  copper 
mines  of  the  New  World  were  uncovered.  Then 
came  the  unexpected  finding  of  the  mammoth  iron- 
ore  beds  by  William  A.  Burt,  inventor  of  the  solar 
compass.  The  circumstance  of  this  discovery  is  of 
such  national  importance  that  a  contemporary  de¬ 
scription  by  a  member  of  Burt’s  party  which  was 
surveying  a  line  near  Marquette,  Michigan,  is 
worth  quoting: 

I  shall  never  forget  the  excitement  of  the  old  gentle¬ 
man  when  viewing  the  changes  of  the  variation.  He 
kept  changing  his  position  to  take  observations,  all 
the  time  saying  “How  would  they  survey  this  country 
without  my  compass”  and  “What  could  be  done  here 


166  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


without  my  compass.”  At  length  the  compassman 
called  for  us  all  to  “come  and  see  a  variation  which 
will  beat  them  all.”  As  we  looked  at  the  instrument, 
to  our  astonishment,  the  north  end  of  the  needle  was 
traversing  a  few  degrees  to  the  south  west.  Mr.  Burt 
called  out  “Boys,  look  around  and  see  what  you  can 
find.”  We  all  left  the  line,  some  going  to  the  east, 
some  going  to  the  west,  and  all  of  us  returned  with 
specimens  of  iron  ore. 

But  it  was  not  enough  that  this  Aladdin’s  Land 
in  the  Northwest  should  revolutionize  the  copper 
and  steel  industry  of  the  world,  for  as  soon  as  the 
soil  took  to  its  bosom  an  enterprising  race  of  agricul¬ 
turists  it  bade  fair  to  play  as  equally  important  a 
part  in  the  grain  industry.  Copper  and  iron  no 
less  came  out  of  the  blue  of  this  cold  northern 
region  than  did  the  mighty  crops  of  Minnesota 
wheat,  corn,  and  oats.  In  the  decade  preceding  the 
Civil  War  the  export  of  wheat  from  Lake  Superior 
rose  from  fourteen  hundred  bushels  to  three  and  a 
quarter  millions  of  bushels,  while  in  1859  nearly 
seven  million  bushels  of  corn  and  oats  were  sent 
out  to  the  world. 

The  commerce  of  Lake  Superior  could  not  await 
the  building  of  a  canal  around  the  foaming  rapids 
of  the  St.  Mary’s  River,  its  one  outlet  to  the  lower 
lakes.  In  the  decade  following  the  discovery  of 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  167 


copper  and  iron  more  than  a  dozen  ships,  one  even 
of  as  much  as  five  hundred  tons,  were  hauled  bodily 
across  the  portage  between  Lake  Huron  and  Lake 
Superior.  The  last  link  of  navigation  in  the  Great 
Lake  system,  however,  was  made  possible  in  1852 
by  a  grant  by  Congress  of  750,000  acres  of  Michi¬ 
gan  land.  Although  only  a  mile  in  length,  the 
work  proved  to  be  of  unusual  difficulty  since  the 
pathway  for  the  canal  had  to  be  blasted  through¬ 
out  practically  its  whole  length  out  of  solid  rock. 
It  was  completed  in  1855,  and  the  princely  empire 
“in  the  moon”  was  in  a  position  to  make  its  terms 
with  the  coal  fields  of  Pennsylvania  and  to  usher  in 
the  iron  age  of  transportation  and  construction. 

It  is  only  in  the  light  of  this  awakening  of  the 
lands  around  the  Great  Lakes  that  one  can  see 
plainly  the  task  which  fell  to  the  lot  of  the  succes¬ 
sors  of  the  frail  W alk-in-the-W ater  and  sturdier 
Superior  of  the  early  twenties.  For  the  first  fifteen 
years  the  steamboat  found  its  mission  in  carrying 
the  thousands  of  emigrants  pouring  into  the  North¬ 
west,  a  heterogeneous  multitude  which  made  the 
Lake  Erie  boats  seem,  to  one  traveler  at  least, 
filled  with  “men,  women  and  children,  beds,  cra¬ 
dles,  kettles,  and  frying  pans.”  These  craft  were 
built  after  the  pattern  of  the  W  alk-in-the-W  ater  — 


168  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


side-wheelers  with  a  steering  wheel  at  the  stern. 
No  cabins  or  staterooms  on  deck  were  provided; 
and  amid  such  freight  as  the  thriving  young  towns 
provided  were  to  be  found  the  twenty  or  thirty 
cords  of  wood  which  the  engines  required  as  fuel. 

The  second  period  of  steamboating  began  with 
the  opening  of  the  Ohio  Canal  and  the  Welland 
Canal  about  1834  and  extended  another  fifteen 
years  to  the  middle  of  the  century,  when  it  under¬ 
went  a  transformation  owing  to  the  great  develop¬ 
ment  of  Chicago,  the  completion  of  the  Illinois  and 
Michigan  and  St.  Mary’s  canals,  and  the  new  rail¬ 
ways.  This  second  period  was  marked  by  the 
building  of  such  steamers  as  the  Michigan ,  the 
Great  Western ,  and  the  Illinois.  These  were  the 
first  boats  with  an  upper  cabin  and  were  looked 
upon  with  marked  suspicion  by  those  best  ac¬ 
quainted  with  the  severe  storms  upon  the  Great 
Lakes.  The  Michigan ,  of  475  tons,  built  by  Oliver 
Newberry  at  Detroit  in  1833,  is  said  to  have  been 
the  first  ship  of  this  type.  These  boats  proved 
their  seaworthiness  and  caused  a  revolution  in  the 
construction  of  lake  craft.  Later  in  this  period 
freight  transportation  saw  an  equally  radical  ad¬ 
vance  with  the  building  of  the  first  propellers.  The 
sloop-rigged  Vandalia,  built  by  Sylvester  Doolittle 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  169 


at  Oswego  on  Lake  Ontario  in  1841-42,  was  the  first 
of  the  propeller  type  and  was  soon  followed  by  the 
Hercules ,  the  Samson ,  and  the  Detroit. 

One  very  great  handicap  in  lake  commerce  up 
to  this  time  had  been  the  lack  of  harbors.  Detroit 
alone  of  the  lake  ports  was  distinctly  favored  in  this 
respect.  The  harbors  of  Buffalo,  Cleveland,  Mil¬ 
waukee,  and  Chicago  were  improved  slowly,  but 
it  was  not  until  the  great  Chicago  convention  of 
1846  that  the  nation’s  attention  was  focused  on 
the  needs  of  Western  rivers  and  harbors,  and  there 
dawned  a  new  era  of  lighthouses  and  buoys,  break¬ 
waters  and  piers,  and  dredged  channels.  Another 
handicap  to  the  volume  of  business  which  the  lake 
boats  handled  in  the  period  just  previous  to  the 
Civil  War  was  the  inadequacy  of  the  feeders,  the 
roads,  river  ways,  and  canals.  The  Erie  Canal  was 
declared  too  small  almost  before  the  cries  of  its 
virulent  opponents  had  died  away,  and  the  en¬ 
largement  of  its  locks  was  soon  undertaken.  The 
same  thing  proved  true  of  the  Ohio  and  Illinois 
canals.  The  failure  of  the  Welland  Canal  was 
similarly  a  very  serious  handicap.  Although  its 
locks  were  enlarged  in  1841,  it  was  found  by  1850 
that  despite  the  improvements  it  could  not  admit 
more  than  about  one-third  of  the  grain-carrying 


170  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


boats,  while  only  one  in  four  of  the  new  propellers 
could  enter  its  locks. 

As  late  as  the  middle  forties  men  did  not  in  the 
least  grasp  the  commercial  situation  which  now 
confronted  the  Northwest  nor  could  they  foresee 
that  the  land  behind  the  Great  Lakes  was  about  to 
deluge  the  country  with  an  output  of  produce  and 
manufactures  of  which  the  roads,  canals,  ships, 
wharfs,  or  warehouses  in  existence  could  handle 
not  a  tenth  part.  They  did  not  yet  understand 
that  this  trade  was  to  become  national.  It  was 
well  on  in  the  forties  before  the  Galena  lead  mines, 
for  instance,  were  given  up  as  the  terminal  of  the 
Illinois  Central  Railroad  and  the  main  line  was 
directed  to  Chicago.  The  middle  of  the  century 
was  reached  before  the  Lake  Shore  was  considered 
at  Cleveland  or  Chicago  as  important  commer¬ 
cially  as  the  neighboring  portage  paths  which  by 
the  Ordinance  of  1787  had  been  created  “common 
highways  forever  free.”  The  idea  of  joining  Buffa¬ 
lo,  Cleveland,  and  Chicago  with  the  interior  —  an 
idea  as  old  as  the  Indian  trails  thither  —  still  domi¬ 
nated  men’s  minds  even  in  the  early  part  of  the 
railroad  epoch.  Chicago  desired  to  be  connected 
with  Cairo,  the  ice-free  port  on  the  Mississippi; 
and  Cleveland  was  eager  to  be  joined  to  Columbus 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  171 


and  Cincinnati.  The  enthusiastic  railway  pro¬ 
moters  of  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois  drew  splendid 
plans  for  uniting  all  parts  of  those  States  by  rail¬ 
way  lines ;  but  the  strategic  position  of  the  cities  on 
the  continental  alignment  from  New  York  to  the 
Pacific  by  way  of  South  Pass  never  came  with¬ 
in  their  horizon.  The  ten  million  dollar  Illinois 
scheme  did  not  even  contemplate  a  railway  run¬ 
ning  eastward  from  Chicago.  But  the  future  of 
the  commerce  of  the  Great  Lakes  depended  abso¬ 
lutely  upon  this  development.  There  was  no  hope 
of  any  canals  being  able  to  handle  the  traffic  of  the 
mighty  empire  which  was  now  awake  and  fully 
conscious  of  its  power.  The  solution  lay  in  joining 
the  cities  to  each  other  and  to  the  Atlantic  world 
markets  by  iron  rails  running  east  and  west. 

This  railroad  expansion  is  what  makes  the  last 
decade  before  the  Civil  War  such  a  remarkable 
series  of  years  in  the  West.  In  the  half  decade, 
1850-55,  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  and  Pennsyl¬ 
vania  railways  reached  the  Ohio  River;  the  links 
of  the  present  Lake  Shore  system  between  Buffalo 
and  Chicago  by  way  of  Cleveland  and  Toledo  were 
constructed;  and  the  Pennsylvania  line  was  put 
through  from  Pittsburgh  to  Chicago.  The  place 
of  the  lake  country  on  the  continental  alignment 


172  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


and  the  imperial  situation  of  Chicago,  and  later  of 
Omaha,  came  to  be  realized.  The  new  view  trans¬ 
formed  men’s  conceptions  of  every  port  on  the 
Great  Lakes  in  the  chain  from  Buffalo  to  Chicago. 
At  a  dozen  southern  ports  on  Ontario,  Erie,  Huron, 
and  Michigan,  commerce  now  touched  the  swiftest 
and  most  economical  means  of  transcontinental 
traffic.  This  development  culminated  in  the  mir¬ 
acle  we  call  Chicago.  In  1847  not  a  line  of  rail 
entered  the  town;  its  population  then  numbered 
about  twenty-five  thousand  and  its  property  valua¬ 
tion  approximated  seven  millions.  Ten  years  later 
four  thousand  miles  of  railway  connected  with  all 
four  points  of  the  compass  a  city  of  nearly  one  hun¬ 
dred  thousand  people,  and  property  valuation  had 
increased  five  hundred  per  cent.  The  growth  of 
Buffalo,  Cleveland,  and  Detroit  during  this  period 
was  also  phenomenal. 

When  the  crisis  of  1861  came,  the  service  per¬ 
formed  by  the  W alk-in-the-W ater  and  her  successors 
was  seen  in  its  true  light.  The  Great  Lakes  as 
avenues  of  migration  had  played  a  providential 
part  in  filling  a  northern  empire  with  a  proud  and 
loyal  race;  from  farm  and  factory  regiment  on  regi¬ 
ment  marched  forth  to  fight  for  unity;  from  fields 
without  number  produce  to  sustain  a  nation  on 


THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  LAKES  173 


trial  poured  forth  in  abundance;  enormous  quanti¬ 
ties  of  iron  were  at  hand  for  the  casting  of  cannon 
and  cannon  balls;  and,  finally,  pathways  of  water 
and  steel  were  in  readiness  in  the  nick  of  time 
to  carry  these  resources  where  they  would  count 
tremendously  in  the  four  long  years  of  conflict. 


CHAPTER  XI 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST 

■ 

Two  great  fields  of  service  lay  open  before  those 
who  were  to  achieve  by  steam  the  mastery  of  the 
inland  waterways.  On  the  one  hand  the  cotton 
kingdom  of  the  South,  now  demanding  great  stores 
of  manufactured  goods,  produce,  and  machinery, 
was  waiting  to  be  linked  to  the  valleys  and  indus¬ 
trial  cities  of  the  Middle  West;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  along  those  great  eastward  and  westward 
rivers,  the  Ohio  and  Missouri,  lay  the  commerce 
of  the  prairies  and  the  Great  Plains.  Rut  before 
the  steamboat  could  serve  the  inland  commerce  of 
the  West,  it  had  to  be  constructed  on  new  lines. 
The  craft  brought  from  the  seaboard  were  of  too 
deep  draft  to  navigate  shallow  streams  which  ran 
through  this  more  level  country. 

The  task  of  constructing  a  great  inland  river 

marine  to  play  the  dual  role  of  serving  the  cotton 

empire  and  of  extending  American  migration  and 

174 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  175 


commerce  into  the  trans-Mississippi  region  was 
solved  by  Henry  Shreve  when  he  built  the  Wash¬ 
ington  at  Wheeling  in  1816.  Shreve  was  the  Ameri¬ 
can  John  Hawkins.  Hawkins,  that  sturdy  old  ad¬ 
miral  of  Elizabethan  days,  took  the  English  ship 
of  his  time,  trimmed  down  the  high  stern  and  poop 
decks,  and  cut  away  the  deep-lying  prow  and  stern, 
after  the  fashion  of  our  modern  cup  defenders,  and 
in  a  day  gave  England  the  key  to  sea  mastery  in 
the  shape  of  a  new  ship  that  would  take  sail  and 
answer  her  rudder  beyond  anything  the  maritime 
world  until  then  had  known.  Shreve,  like  Haw¬ 
kins,  flagrantly  ignoring  the  conventional  wisdom  of 
his  day  and  craft,  built  the  Washington  to  sail  on 
the  water  instead  of  in  it,  doing  away  altogether 
with  a  hold  and  supplying  an  upper  deck  in 
its  place. 

To  few  inventors,  indeed,  does  America  owe  a 
greater  debt  of  thanks  than  to  this  Ohio  River  ship¬ 
builder.  A  dozen  men  were  on  the  way  to  produce 
a  Clermont  had  Fulton  failed;  but  Shreve  had  no 
rival  in  his  plan  to  build  a  flat-bottomed  steam¬ 
boat.  The  remarkable  success  of  his  design  is  at¬ 
tested  by  the  fact  that  in  two  decades  the  boats 
built  on  his  model  outweighed  in  tonnage  all  the 
ships  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard  and  Great  Lakes 


176  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

*• 

combined.  Immediately  the  Ohio  became  in  effect 
the  western  extension  of  the  great  national  high¬ 
way  and  opened  an  easy  pathway  for  immigration 
to  the  eastern  as  well  as  the  western  lands  of  the 
Mississippi  Basin.  The  story  goes  that  an  old  phleg¬ 
matic  negro  watched  the  approach  of  one  of  the 
first  steamboats  to  the  wharf  of  a  Southern  city. 
Like  many  others,  he  had  doubted  the  practicabil¬ 
ity  of  this  new-fangled  Yankee  notion.  The  boat, 
however,  came  and  went  with  ease  and  dispatch. 
The  old  negro  was  converted.  “By  golly,”  he 
shouted,  waving  his  cap,  “the  Mississippi’s  got 
her  Massa  now.” 

The  Mississippi  had  indeed  found  her  master, 
but  only  by  slow  degrees  and  after  intervals  of  pro¬ 
tracted  rebellion  did  she  succumb  to  that  master. 
Luckily,  however,  there  was  at  hand  an  army  of 
unusual  men  —  the  “alligator-horses”  of  the  flat- 
boat  era  —  upon  whom  the  steamboat  could  call 
with  supreme  confidence  that  they  would  not  fail. 
Theodore  Roosevelt  has  said  of  the  Western  pioneers 
that  they  “  had  to  be  good  and  strong  —  especially, 
strong.”  If  these  men  upon  whom  the  success  of 
the  steamboat  depended  were  not  always  good,  they 
were  beyond  any  doubt  behemoths  in  strength. 

The  task  before  them,  however,  was  a  task  worthy 


THE  STEAMER  “  YELLOWSTONE ON  THE  MISSOURI 

RIVER 

The  first  vessel  that  successfully  navigated  the  river;  built  and 
operated  by  the  American  Fur  Company.  Engraving  after  a 
drawing  by  Charles  Bodmer,  in  Travels  in  the  Interior  of  North 
America.  In  the  New  York  Public  Library. 


Y 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  177 


of  Hercules.  The  great  river  boldly  fought  its 
conquerors,  asking  and  giving  no  quarter,  biding 
its  time  when  opposed  by  the  brave  but  crushing 
the  fearful  on  sight.  In  one  respect  alone  could  it 
be  depended  upon  —  it  was  never  the  same.  It  is 
said  to  bring  down  annually  four  hundred  million 
tons  of  mud,  but  its  eccentricity  in  deciding  where 
to  wash  away  and  where  to  deposit  its  load  is  still 
the  despair  of  river  pilots.  The  great  river  could 
destroy  islands  and  build  new  ones  overnight  with 
the  nonchalance  of  a  child  playing  with  clay.  It 
could  shorten  itself  thirty  miles  at  a  single  lunge. 
It  could  move  inland  towns  to  its  banks  and  leave 
river  towns  far  inland.  It  transferred  the  town  of 
Delta,  for  instance,  from  three  miles  below  Vicks¬ 
burg  to  two  miles  above  it.  Men  have  gone  to 
sleep  in  one  State  and  have  wakened  unharmed  in 
another,  because  the  river  decided  in  the  night  to 
alter  the  boundary  line.  In  this  way  the  village  of 
Hard  Times,  the  original  site  of  which  was  in  Louisi¬ 
ana,  found  itself  eventually  in  Mississippi.  Were 
La  Salle  to  descend  the  river  today  by  the  route  he 
traversed  two  and  a  half  centuries  ago,  he  would 
follow  dry  ground  most  of  the  way,  for  the  river 
now  lies  practically  everywhere  either  to  the  right 
or  left  of  its  old  course. 


12 


178  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


If  the  Mississippi  could  perform  such  miracles 
upon  its  whole  course  without  a  show  of  effort, 
what  could  it  not  do  with  the  little  winding  canal 
through  its  center  called  by  pilots  the  “channel”? 
The  flatboatmen  had  laboriously  acquired  the  art  of 
piloting  the  commerce  of  the  West  through  this 
mazy,  shifting  channel,  but  as  steamboats  devel¬ 
oped  in  size  and  power  the  man  at  the  wheel  had 
to  become  almost  a  superman.  He  needed  to  be. 
He  must  know  the  stage  of  water  anywhere  by  a 
glance  at  the  river  banks.  He  must  guess  correctly 
the  amount  of  “fill”  at  the  head  of  dangerous  chutes, 
detect  bars  “working  down,”  distinguish  between 
bars  and  “sand  reefs”  or  “wind  reefs”  or  “bluff 
reefs  ”  by  night  as  well  as  by  day,  avoid  the“  breaks  ” 
in  the  “graveyard  ”  behind  Goose  Island,  navigate 
the  Hat  Island  chutes,  or  find  the  “  middle  crossing  ” 
at  Hole-in-the-Wall.  He  must  navigate  his  craft 
in  fogs,  in  storms,  in  the  face  of  treacherous  winds, 
on  black  nights,  with  thousands  of  dollars’  worth 
of  cargo  and  hundreds  of  lives  at  stake. 

As  the  golfer  knows  each  knoll  and  tuft  of  grass 
on  his  home  links,  so  the  pilot  learned  his  river  by 
heart.  Said  one  of  these  pilots  to  an  apprentice: 

You  see  this  has  got  to  be  learned.  ...  A  clear  star¬ 
light  night  throws  such  heavy  shadows  that  if  you 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  179 


didn’t  know  the  shape  of  a  shore  perfectly  you  would 
claw  away  from  every  bunch  of  timber  because  you 
would  take  the  black  shadow  of  it  for  a  solid  cape;  and 
you  see  you  would  be  getting  scared  to  death  every 
fifteen  minutes  by  the  watch.  You  would  be  fifty 
yards  from  shore  all  the  time  when  you  ought  to  be 
within  fifty  feet  of  it.  You  can’t  see  a  snag  in  one  of 
those  shadows,  but  you  know  exactly  where  it  is,  and 
the  shape  of  the  river  tells  you  when  you  are  coming 
to  it.  Then  there’s  your  pitch-dark  night;  the  river 
is  a  very  different,  shape  on  a  pitch-dark  night  from 
what  it  is  on  a  starlight  night.  All  shores  seem  to  be 
straight  lines,  then,  and  mighty  dim  ones,  too;  and 
you’d  run  them  for  straight  lines  only  you  know 
better.  You  boldly  drive  your  boat  right  into  what 
seems  to  be  a  solid,  straight  wall  (you  knowing  very 
well  that  in  reality  there  is  a  curve  there)  and  that 
wall  falls  back  and  makes  way  for  you.  Then  there’s 
your  gray  mist.  You  take  a  night  when  there’s  one 
of  these  grisly,  drizzly,  gray  mists,  and  then  there 
isn’t  any  particular  shape  to  a  shore.  A  gray  mist 
would  tangle  the  head  of  the  oldest  man  that  ever 
lived.  Well,  then,  different  kinds  of  moonlight  change 
the  shape  of  the  river  in  different  ways.  .  .  .  You 
only  learn  the  shape  of  the  river;  and  you  learn  it  with 
such  absolute  certainty  that  you  can  always  steer  by 
the  shape  that’s  in  your  head  and  never  mind  the  one 
that’s  before  your  eyes. 1 

No  wonder  that  the  two  hundred  miles  of  the  Mis¬ 
sissippi  from  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio  to  St.  Louis 

1  Mark  Twain,  Life  on  the  Mississippi,  pp.  103-04. 


180  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

in  time  contained  the  wrecks  of  two  hundred 
steamboats. 

The  river  trade  reached  its  zenith  between  1840 
and  1860,  in  the  two  decades  previous  to  the  Civil 
War,  that  period  before  the  railroads  began  to 
parallel  the  great  rivers.  It  was  a  time  which  saw 
the  rise  of  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Missouri,  Iowa, 
and  Arkansas,  and  which  witnessed  the  spread 
of  the  cotton  kingdom  into  the  Southwest.  The 
story  of  King  Cotton’s  conquest  of  the  Mississippi 
South  is  best  told  in  statistics.  In  1811,  the  year 
of  the  first  voyage  which  the  New  Orleans  made 
down  the  Ohio  River,  Tennessee,  Louisiana,  and 
Mississippi  exported  five  million  pounds  of  cotton. 
In  1834  these  same  States  exported  almost  two  hun¬ 
dred  million  pounds  of  cotton.  To  take  care  of 
this  crop  and  to  supply  the  cotton  country,  which 
was  becoming  wealthy,  with  the  necessaries  and 
luxuries  of  life,  more  and  more  steamboats  were 
needed.  The  great  shipyards  situated,  because  of 
the  proximity  of  suitable  timber,  at  St.  Louis,  Cin¬ 
cinnati,  and  Louisville  became  busy  hives,  not 
since  paralleled  except  by  such  centers  of  ship¬ 
building  as  Hog  Island  in  1917-18,  during  the  time 
of  the  Great  War.  The  steamboat  tonnage  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley  (exclusive  of  New  Orleans)  in 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  181 


the  hustling  forties  exceeded  that  of  the  Atlantic 
ports  (exclusive  of  New  York  City)  by  15,000  tons. 
The  steamboat  tonnage  of  New  Orleans  alone  in 
1843  was  more  than  double  that  of  New  York  City. 

Those  who,  if  the  old  story  is  true,  ran  in  fear  to 
the  hills  when  the  little  New  Orleans  went  puffing 
down  the  Ohio,  in  1811,  would  have  been  doubly 
amazed  at  the  splendid  development  in  the  art  of 
boat  building,  could  they  have  seen  the  stately 
Sultana  or  Southern  Belle  of  the  fifties  sweep  swiftly 
by.  After  a  period  of  gaudy  ornamentation  (1830- 
40)  steamboat  architecture  settled  down,  as  has 
that  of  Pullman  cars  today,  to  sane  and  practical 
lines,  and  the  boats  gained  in  length  and  strength, 
though  they  contained  less  weight  of  timber.  The 
value  of  one  of  the  greater  boats  of  this  era  would 
be  about  fifty  thousand  dollars.  When  Captain 
Bixby  made  his  celebrated  night  crossing  at  Hat 
Island  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars  in  ship  and  cargo 
would  have  been  the  price  of  an  error  in  judgment, 
according  to  Mark  Twain,1  a  good  authority. 

The  Yorktown ,  built  in  1844  for  the  Ohio-Missis- 
sippi  trade,  was  typical  of  that  epoch  of  inland 
commerce.  Her  length  was  182  feet,  breadth  of 
beam  31  feet,  and  the  diameter  of  wheels  28  feet. 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  101. 


182  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

Though  her  hold  was  8  feet  in  depth,  yet  she  drew 
but  4  feet  of  water  light  and  barely  over  8  feet  when 
loaded  with  500  tons  of  freight.  She  had  4  boilers, 
30  feet  long  and  42  inches  in  diameter,  double 
engines,  and  two  24-inch  cylinders.  The  state¬ 
room  cabin  had  come  in  with  Captain  Isaiah  Sel¬ 
lers’s  Prairie  in  1836,  the  first  boat  with  such  luxu¬ 
ries  ever  seen  in  St.  Louis,  according  to  Sellers.  The 
Yorktown  had  40  private  cabins.  It  is  interesting 
to  compare  the  Yorktown  with  The  Queen  of  the 
West ,  the  giant  British  steamer  built  for  the  Fal¬ 
mouth- Calcutta  trade  in  1839.  The  Queen  of  the 
West  had  a  length  of  310  feet,  a  beam  of  31  feet,  a 
draft  of  15  feet,  and  16  private  cabins.  The  build¬ 
ing  of  this  great  vessel  led  a  writer  in  the  New  York 
American  to  say:  “It  would  really  seem  that  we 
as  a  nation  had  no  interest  in  this  new  application 
of  steam  power,  or  no  energy  to  appropriate  it  to 
our  own  use.”  The  statement  —  written  in  a  day 
when  the  Mississippi  steamboat  tonnage  exceeded 
that  of  the  entire  British  Empire  —  is  one  of  the 
best  examples  of  provincial  ignorance  concerning 
the  West. 

On  these  steamboats  there  was  a  multiplicity  of 
arrangements  and  equipments  for  preventing  and 
for  fighting  fire.  One  of  the  innovations  on  the 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  183 


new  boats  in  this  particular  was  the  substitution 
of  wire  for  the  combustible  rope  formerly  used  to 
control  the  tiller,  so  that  even  in  time  of  fire  the  pilot 
could  “hold  her  nozzle  agin’  the  bank.”  Much 
of  the  great  loss  of  life  in  steamboat  fires  had  been 
due  to  the  tiller-ropes  being  burned  and  the  boats 
becoming  unmanageable. 

The  arrival  of  the  railroad  at  the  head  of  the 

* 

Ohio  River  in  the  early  fifties  brought  the  East 
into  an  immediate  touch  with  the  Mississippi  Val¬ 
ley  unknown  before.  But  however  bold  railway 
engineers  were  in  the  face  of  the  ragged  ranges 
of  the  Alleghanies,  they  could  not  then  out-guess 
the  tricks  of  the  Ohio,  the  Mississippi,  or  the  Mis¬ 
souri,  and  railway  promoters  could  not  afford  to 
take  chances  on  having  their  stations  and  tracks 
unexpectedly  isolated,  if  not  actually  carried  away, 
by  swirling,  yellow  floods.  The  Mississippi,  too, 
had  been  known  at  times  to  achieve  a  width  of 
seventy  miles,  and  tributaries  have  overflowed 
their  banks  to  a  proportionate  extent.  It  was 
several  decades  ere  the  Ohio  was  paralleled  by  a 
railway,  and  the  Mississippi  for  long  distances  even 
today  has  not  yet  heard  the  shrill  cry  of  the  loco¬ 
motive.  So  the  steamboat  entered  its  heyday  and 
encountered  little  competition.  Until  the  Civil 


r 


184  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

War  the  rivers  of  the  West  remained  the  great 
arteries  of  trade,  carrying  grain  and  merchandise 
of  every  description  southward  and  bringing  back 
cotton,  rice,  and  sugar. 

The  rivalries  of  the  great  lines  of  packets  estab¬ 
lished  in  these  days  of  the  steamboat,  however, 
equaled  anything  ever  known  in  railway  competi¬ 
tion,  and,  in  the  matter  of  fast  time,  became  more 
spectacular  than  anything  of  its  kind  in  any  line  of 
transportation  in  our  country.  With  flags  flying, 
boilers  heated  white  with  abundance  of  pine  and 
resin,  and  bold  and  skillful  pilots  at  the  steering 
wheels,  no  sport  of  kings  ever  aroused  the  enthusi¬ 
asm  of  hundreds  of  thousands  to  such  a  pitch  as 
did  many  of  the  old-time  races  northward  from 
New  Orleans. 

The  J.  M.  White  and  her  performances  stand 
out  conspicuously  in  the  annals  of  the  river.  Her 
builder,  familiarly  known  to  a  generation  of  river- 
men  as  Billy  King,  deserves  to  rank  with  Henry 
Shreve.  Commissioned  in  1844  to  build  the  J.  M. 
White  for  J.  M.  Converse  of  St.  Louis,  with  funds 
supplied  by  Robert  Chouteau  of  that  city.  King 
proceeded  to  put  into  effect  the  knowledge  which 
he  had  derived  from  a  close  study  of  the  swells 

made  by  steamboats  when  under  way.  When  the 

><$ 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  185 


boat  was  being  built  in  the  famous  shipyards  at 
Elizabeth,  on  the  Monongahela,  the  wheel  beams 
were  set  twenty  feet  farther  back  than  was  custom¬ 
ary.  Converse  was  struck  with  this  unheard-of 
radicalism  in  design,  and  balked;  King  was  a  man 
given  to  few  words;  he  was  resolved  to  throw  con¬ 
vention  to  the  winds  and  trust  his  judgment;  he 

refused  to  build  the  boat  on  other  lines.  Converse 

* 

felt  compelled  to  let  Chouteau  pass  on  the  ques¬ 
tion;  in  time  the  laconic  answer  came:  “Let  King 
put  the  beams  where  he  pleases.” 

Thus  the  craft  which  Converse  thought  a  mon¬ 
strosity  became  known  far  and  wide  for  both  its 
design  and  its  speed.  In  1844  the  J.  M.  White 
made  the  record  of  three  days,  twenty -three  hours, 
and  nine  minutes  between  New  Orleans  and  St. 
Louis.1  Of  course  the  secret  of  Billy  King’s  suc¬ 
cess  soon  became  known.  He  had  placed  his  pad¬ 
dle  wheels  where  they  would  bite  into  the  swell 

1  This  performance  is  illustrated  by  the  following  comparative  table 
showing  the  best  records  of  later  years  between  New  Orleans  and  St. 
Louis,  a  distance  estimated  in  1844  as  1300  miles  but  in  1870  as  1218 
miles,  owing  to  the  action  of  the  river  in  shortening  its  course. 


Year 

Boat 

Time 

1844 

J.  M.  White 

3d. 

23  h. 

9  m. 

1849 

Missouri 

4  d. 

19  h. 

— 

1869 

Dexter 

4  d. 

9  h. 

— 

1870 

Natchez 

3  d. 

21  h. 

58  m. 

1870 

R.  E.  Lee 

3  d. 

18  h. 

14  m. 

186  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


produced  by  every  boat  just  under  its  engines.  He 
bad  transformed  what  had  been  a  handicap  into 
a  positive  asset.  It  is  said  that  he  attempted  to 
shield  his  prize  against  competition  by  destroying 
the  model  of  the  J.  M.  White ,  as  well  as  to  have  re- 

I  » 

fused  large  offers  to  build  a  boat  that  would  beat 
her.  But  it  is  said  also  that  an  exhibition  model  of 
the  boat  was  a  cherished  possession  of  E.  M.  Stan¬ 
ton,  Secretary  of  War,  and  that  it  hung  in  his  office 
during  Lincoln’s  administration. 

The  steamboat  now  extended  its  service  to  the 
West  and  North.  The  ancient  fur  trade  with  the 
Indians  of  the  upper  Mississippi,  the  Missouri,  and 
the  Arkansas,  had  its  headquarters  at  St.  Louis, 
whence  the  notable  band  of  men  engaged  in  that 
trade  were  reaching  out  to  the  Rockies.  The  roll 
includes  Ashley,  Campbell,  Sublette,  Manuel  Lisa, 
Perkins,  Hempstead,  William  Clark,  Labadie,  the 
Chouteaus,  and  Menard  —  men  of  different  races 
and  colors  and  alike  only  in  their  energy,  bravery, 
and  initiative.  Through  them  the  village  of  St. 
Louis  had  grown  to  a  population  of  four  thousand 
in  1819,  when  Major  Long’s  expedition  passed  up 
the  Missouri  in  the  first  steamboat  to  ascend  that 
river.  This  boat,  the  Western  Engineer ,  was  built 
at  Pittsburgh  and  was  modeled  cunningly  for  its 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  187 

work.  It  was  one  of  the  first  stern  wheelers  built 
in  the  West;  and  the  saving  in  width  meant  much 
on  streams  having  such  narrow  channels  as  the  Mis¬ 
souri  and  the  Platte,  especially  when  barges  were 
to  be  towed.  Then,  too,  its  machinery,  which  was 
covered  over  or  boarded  up,  was  shrouded  in  mys¬ 
tery.  A  fantastic  figure  representing  a  serpent’s 
open  mouth  contained  the  exhaust  pipe.  If  the 
New  Orleans  alarmed  the  population  of  the  Ohio 
Valley,  the  sensation  caused  among  the  red  children 
of  the  Missouri  at  the  sight  of  this  gigantic  snake 
belching  fire  and  smoke  must  have  thoroughly 
satisfied  the  whim  of  its  designer. 

The  admission  of  Missouri  to  statehood  and  the 
independence  of  Mexico  mark  the  beginning  of  real 
commercial  relations  between  St.  Louis  and  Santa 
Fe.  In  1822  Captain  William  Becknell  organized 
the  first  wagon  train  which  left  the  Missouri  (at 
Franklin,  near  Independence)  for  the  long  danger¬ 
ous  journey  to  the  Arkansas  and  on  to  Santa  Fe. 
In  the  following  year  two  expeditions  set  forth, 
carrying  out  cottons  and  other  drygoods  to 
exchange  for  horses,  mules,  furs,  and  silver. 

Despite  the  handicaps  of  Indian  opposition  and 
Mexican  tariffs,  the  Santa  Fe  trade  became  an  im¬ 
portant  factor  in  the  growth  of  St.  Louis  and  the 


188  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


Missouri  River  steamboat  lines.  In  1825  the  path¬ 
way  was  “ surveyed’’  from  Franklin  to  San  Fer¬ 
nando,  then  in  Mexico.  This  Santa  Fe  trade  grew 
from  fifteen  thousand  pounds  of  freight  in  1822  to 
nearly  half  a  million  pounds  twenty  years  later. 

By  1826  steamboat  traffic  up  the  Missouri  began 
to  assume  regularity.  The  navigation  was  danger¬ 
ous  and  difficult  because  the  Missouri  never  kept 
even  an  approximately  constant  head  of  water.  In 
times  of  drought  it  became  very  shallow,  and  in 
times  of  flood  it  tore  its  wayward  course  open  in  any 
direction  it  chose.  “Of  all  variable  things  in  crea¬ 
tion,”  wrote  a  Western  editor,  “the  most  uncer¬ 
tain  are  the  action  of  a  jury,  the  state  of  a  woman’s 
mind,  and  the  condition  of  the  Missouri  River.  ’  ’  A 
further  handicap,  and  one  which  was  unknown  on 
the  Ohio  and  rare  on  the  Mississippi,  was  the  lack 
of  forests  to  supply  the  necessary  fuel.  The  Mis¬ 
souri,  it  is  true,  had  its  cottonwoods,  but  in  a  green 
state  they  were  poor  fuel,  and  along  vast  stretches 
they  were  not  obtainable  in  any  quantity. 

The  steamboat  linked  St.  Louis  with  that  vital 
stretch  of  the  river  lying  between  the  mouth  of 
the  Kansas  and  the  mouth  of  the  Nebraska. 
From  this  region  the  great  Western  trail  ran  on 
to  California  and  Oregon.  In  the  early  thirties 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  189 


Bonneville,  Walker,  Kelley,  and  Wyeth  successively 
essayed  this  Overland  Trail  by  way  of  the  Platte 
through  the  South  Pass  of  the  Rockies  to  the 
Humboldt,  Snake,  and  Columbia  rivers.  From  In¬ 
dependence  on  the  Missouri  this  famous  pathway 
led  to  Fort  Laramie,  a  distance  of  672  miles;  an¬ 
other  300-mile  climb  brought  the  traveler  through 
South  Pass;  and  so,  by  way  of  Fort,Bridger,  Salt 
Lake,  and  Sutter’s  Fort,  to  San  Francisco.  The 
route,  well  known  by  hundreds  of  Oregon  pioneers 
in  the  early  forties,  became  a  thoroughfare  in  the 
eager  days  of  the  Forty-Niners.1 

The  earliest  overland  stage  line  to  Great  Salt 
Lake  was  established  by  Hockaday  and  Liggett. 
After  the  founding  of  the  famous  Overland  Stage 
Company  by  Russell,  Majors,  and  Waddell  in  1858, 
stages  were  soon  ascending  the  Platte  from  the 
steamboat  terminals  on  the  Missouri  and  making 
the  twelve  hundred  miles  from  St.  Joseph  to  Salt 
Lake  City  in  ten  days.  Stations  were  established 
from  ten  to  fifteen  miles  apart,  and  the  line  was 
soon  extended  on  to  Sacramento.  The  nineteen 
hundred  miles  from  St.  Joseph  to  Sacramento  were 
made  in  fifteen  days,  although  the  government 

1  For  map  see  The  Passing  of  the  Frontier,  by  Emerson  Hough  (in 
The  Chronicles  of  America ). 


190  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

contract  with  the  company  for  handling  United 
States  mail  allowed  nineteen  days.  A  host  of  em¬ 
ployees  was  engaged  in  this  exciting  but  not  very  re¬ 
munerative  enterprise — station-agents  and  helpers, 
drivers,  conductors  who  had  charge  of  passengers, 
in  addition  to  mail  and  express  and  road  agents 
who  acted  as  division  superintendents.  In  1862  the 
Overland  Route  was  taken  over  by  the  renowned 
Ben  Holliday,  who  operated  it  until  the  railway 
was  constructed  seven  years  later.  Freight  was 
hauled  by  the  same  company  in  wagons  known  as 
the  “  J.  Murphy  wagons,”  which  were  made  in  St. 
Louis.  These  wagons  went  out  from  Leavenworth 
loaded  with  six  thousand  pounds  of  freight  each. 
A  train  usually  consisted  of  twenty-five  wagons  and 
was  known,  in  the  vernacular  of  the  plains,  as  a 
“bull-outfit”;  the  drivers  were  “bull- whackers”; 
and  the  wagon  master  was  the  “bull-wagon  boss.” 

The  old  story,  however,  was  repeated  again  here 
on  the  boundless  plains  of  the  West.  The  Western 
trails  streaming  out  from  the  terminus  of  steam¬ 
boat  traffic  between  Kansas  City  and  Omaha  had 
scarcely  time  to  become  well  known  before  the  rail¬ 
way  conquerors  of  the  Atlantic  and  Great  Lakes 
regions  were  planning  the  conquest  of  the  greater 
plains  and  the  Rockies  beyond.  The  opening  of 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  191 


the  Chinese  ports  in  1844  turned  men’s  minds  as 
never  before  to  the  Pacific  coast.  The  acquisition 
of  Oregon  within  a  few  years  and  of  California  at 
the  close  of  the  Mexican  War  opened  the  way  for 
a  newspaper  and  congressional  discussion  as  to 
whether  the  first  railway  to  parallel  the  Santa  Fe 
or  the  Overland  Trail  should  run  from  Memphis, 

St.  Louis,  or  Chicago.  The  building  of  the  Union 

** 

Pacific  from  Omaha  westward  assured  the  future  of 
that  city,  and  it  was  soon  joined  to  Chicago  and  the 
East  by  several  lines  which  were  building  toward 
Clinton,  Rock  Island,  and  Burlington. 

But  the  construction  of  a  few  main  lines  of  rail¬ 
way  across  the  continent  could  only  partially  satis¬ 
fy  the  commercial  needs  of  the  West.  True,  the 
overland  trade  was  at  once  transferred  to  the  rail¬ 
road,  but  the  enormous  equipment  of  stage  and  ex¬ 
press  companies  previously  employed  in  westward 
overland  trade  was  now  devoted  to  joining  the  rail¬ 
way  lines  with  the  vast  regions  to  the  north  and  the 
south.  The  rivers  of  the  West  could  not  alone  take 
care  of  this  commerce  and  for  many  years  these 
great  transportation  companies  went  with  their 
stages  and  their  wagons  into  the  growing  Dakota 
and  Montana  trade  and  opened  up  direct  lines  of 
communication  to  the  nearest  railway.  On  the 


192  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 

south  the  cattle  industry  of  Texas  came  northward 
into  touch  with  the  railways  of  Kansas.  Eventu¬ 
ally  lateral  and  trunk  lines  covered  the  West  with 
their  network  of  lines  and  thus  obliterated  all 
rivalry  and  competition  by  providing  unmatched 
facilities  for  quick  transportation. 

In  the  last  days  previous  to  the  opening  of  the 
first  transcontinental  railway  line  a  unique  method 
of  rapid  transportation  for  mail  and  light  parcels 
was  established  when  the  famous  “Pony  Express” 
line  was  put  into  operation  between  St.  Joseph  and 
San  Francisco  in  1860.  By  relays  of  horsemen, 
who  carried  pouches  not  exceeding  twenty  pounds 
in  weight,  the  time  was  cut  to  nine  days.  The  in¬ 
novation  was  the  new  wonder  of  the  world  for  the 
time  being  and  led  to  an  outburst  on  the  part  of  the 
enthusiastic  editor  of  the  St.  Joseph  Free  Democrat 
that  deserves  reading  because  it  breathes  so  fully 
the  Western  spirit  of  exultant  conquest: 

Take  down  your  map  and  trace  the  footprints  of  our 
quadrupedantic  animal:  From  St.  Joseph,  on  the 
Missouri,  to  San  Francisco,  on  the  Golden  Horn  — 
two  thousand  miles  —  more  than  half  the  distance 
across  our  boundless  continent;  through  Kansas, 
through  Nebraska,  by  Fort  Kearney,  along  the  Platte, 
by  Fort  Laramie,  past  the  Buttes,  over  the  Mountains, 
through  the  narrow  passes  and  along  the  steep  defiles, 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  193 


Utah,  Fort  Bridger,  Salt  Lake  City,  he  witches  Brig¬ 
ham  with  his  swift  pony-ship  —  through  the  valleys, 
along  the  grassy  slopes,  into  the  snow,  into  the  sand, 
faster  than  Thor’s  Thialfi,  away  they  go,  rider  and 
horse  —  did  you  see  them?  They  are  in  California, 
leaping  over  its  golden  sands,  treading  its  busy  streets. 
The  courser  has  unrolled  to  us  the  great  American 
panorama,  allowed  us  to  glance  at  the  home  of  one 
million  people,  and  has  put  a  girdle  around  the  earth 
in  forty  minutes.  Verily  the  riding  is  like  the  riding  of 
Jehu,  the  son  of  Nimshi  for  he  rideth  furiously.  Take 
out  your  watch.  WTe  are  eight  days  from  New  York, 
eighteen  from  London.  The  race  is  to  the  swift. r 

The  lifetime  of  many  and  many  a  man  has 
covered  a  period  longer  than  that  interval  of  eighty- 
six  years  between  1783,  when  George  Washington 
had  his  vision  of  4 'the  vast  inland  navigation  of 
these  United  States,  ”  and  the  year  1869,  when  the 
two  divisions  of  the  Union  Pacific  were  joined  by 
a  golden  spike  at  Promontory  Point  in  Utah.  In 
point  of  time,  those  eighty-six  years  are  as  nothing; 
in  point  of  accomplishment,  they  stand  unparal¬ 
leled.  When  Washington’s  horse  splashed  across 
the  Youghiogheny  in  October,  1784,  the  boundary 
lines  of  the  United  States  were  guarded  with  all 
the  jealousy  and  provincial  selfishness  of  Euro¬ 
pean  kingdoms.  But  overnight,  so  to  speak,  these 

1  Quoted  in  Inman’s  The  Great  Salt  Lake  Trail ,  p.  171. 


33 


194  THE  PATHS  OF  INLAND  COMMERCE 


limitations  became  no  more  than  mere  geometrical 
expressions.  “Pennamite, ”  “Erie, ”  and  “Tole¬ 
do”  wars  between  the  States,  suggesting  a  world  of 
bitterness  and  recrimination,  are  remembered  to¬ 
day,  if  at  all,  only  by  the  cartoonist  and  the  play¬ 
wright.  The  ancient  false  pride  in  mock  values, 
so  cherished  in  Europe,  has  quite  departed  from  the 
provincial  areas  of  the  United  States,  and  Ameri¬ 
cans  can  fly  in  a  day,  unwittingly,  through  many 
States.  Problems  that  would  have  cost  Europe 
blood  are  settled  without  turmoil  in  the  solemn 
cloisters  of  that  American  “international  tribu¬ 
nal,  ”  the  Supreme  Court,  and  they  appear  only  as 
items  of  passing  interest  in  our  newspapers. 

In  unifying  the  nation  the  influence  of  the  Su¬ 
preme  Court  has  been  priceless,  for  it  has  given  to 
Americans,  in  place  of  the  colonial  or  provincial 
mind,  a  continental  mind.  But  great  is  the  debt 
of  Americans  to  the  men  who  laid  the  foundations 
of  interstate  commerce.  No  antidote  served  so 
well  to  counteract  the  poison  of  clannish  rivalry  as 
did  their  enthusiasm  and  their  constructive  energy. 
These  men,  dreamers  and  promoters,  were  build¬ 
ing  better  than  they  knew.  They  thought  to 
overcome  mountains,  obliterate  swamps,  conquer 
stormy  lakes,  master  great  rivers  and  endless  plains; 


THE  STEAMBOAT  AND  THE  WEST  195 


but,  as  their  labors  are  judged  today,  the  greater 
service  which  these  men  rendered  appears  in  its 
true  light.  They  stifled  provincialism;  they  bat¬ 
tered  down  Chinese  Walls  of  prejudice  and  separa¬ 
tism;  they  reduced  the  aimless  rivalry  of  bickering 
provinces  to  a  businesslike  common  denominator; 
and,  perhaps  more  than  any  class  of  men,  they 
made  possible  the  wide-spreading  and  yet  united 
Republic  that  is  honored  and  loved  today. 


'  '• 


V 


. 


‘  K  ...  • 


>  .•'Vi,,' 4  ,  , 


. . 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

The  history  of  the  early  phase  of  American  transpor¬ 
tation  is  dealt  with  in  three  general  works.  John 
Luther  Ringwalt’s  Development  of  Transportation 
Systems  in  the  United  States  (1888)  is  a  reliable  sum¬ 
mary  of  the  general  subject  at  the  time.  Archer  B. 
Hulbert’s  Historic  Highways  of  America ,  18  vols. 
(1902-1905),  is  a  collection  of  monographs  of  vary¬ 
ing  quality  written  with  youthful  enthusiasm  by  the 
author,  who  traversed  in  good  part  the  main  pioneer 
roads  and  canals  of  the  eastern  portion  of  the  United 
States;  Indian  trails,  portage  paths,  the  military  roads 
of  the  Old  French  War  period,  the  Ohio  River  as  a 
pathway  of  migration,  the  Cumberland  Road,  and 
three  of  the  canals  which  played  a  part  in  the  western 
movement,  form  the  subject  of  the  more  valuable 
volumes.  The  temptation  of  a  writer  on  transporta¬ 
tion  to  wander  from  his  subject  is  illustrated  in  this 
work,  as  it  is  illustrated  afresh  in  Seymour  Dunbar’s 
A  History  of  Travel  in  America ,  4  vols.  (1915).  The 
reader  will  take  great  pleasure  in  this  magnificently 
illustrated  work,  which,  in  completer  fashion  than  it 
has  ever  been  attempted,  gives  a  readable  running 
story  of  the  whole  subject  for  the  whole  country,  de¬ 
spite  detours,  which  some  will  make  around  the  many 
pages  devoted  to  Indian  relations. 

197 


198 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


For  almost  every  phase  of  the  general  topic  books, 
monographs,  pamphlets,  and  articles  are  to  be  found 
in  the  corners  of  any  great  library,  ranging  in  character 
from  such  productions  as  William  F.  Ganong’s  A  Mono¬ 
graph  of  Historic  Sites  in  the  Province  of  New  Brunswick 
(Proceedings  and  Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Canada,  Second  Series,  vol.  v,  1899)  which  treats  of  early 
travel  in  New  England  and  Canada,  or  St.  George  L. 
Sioussat’s  Highway  Legislation  in  Maryland  and  its  In¬ 
fluence  on  the  Economic  Development  of  the  State  (Mary¬ 
land  Geological  Survey ,  m,  1899)  treating  of  colonial 
road  making  and  legislation  thereon,  or  Elbert  J. 
Benton’s  The  Wabash  Trade  Route  in  the  Develop¬ 
ment  of  the  Old  Northwest  (Johns  Hopkins  Univer¬ 
sity  Studies  in  Historical  and  Political  Science ,  vol.  xxi, 
1903)  and  Julius  Winden’s  The  Influence  of  the  Erie 
Canal  upon  the  Population  along  its  Course  (Univer¬ 
sity  of  Wisconsin,  1901),  which  treat  of  the  economic 
and  political  influence  of  the  opening  of  inland  water 
routes,  to  volumes  of  a  more  popular  character  such  as 
Francis  W.  Halsey’s  The  Old  New  York  Frontier  (1901), 
Frank  H.  Severance’s  Old  Trails  on  the  Niagara  Fron¬ 
tier  (1903)  for  the  North,  and  Charles  A.  Hanna’s 
The  Wilderness  Trail ,  2  vols.  (1911),  and  Thomas 
Speed’s  The  Wilderness  Road  (The  Filson  Club  Pub¬ 
lications ,  vol.  ii,  1886)  for  Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  and 
Kentucky.  The  value  of  Hanna’s  work  deserves 
special  mention. 

For  the  early  phases  of  inland  navigation  John 
Pickell’s  A  New  Chapter  in  the  Early  Life  of  Washing¬ 
ton  (1856),  is  an  excellent  work  of  the  old-fashioned 
type,  while  in  Herbert  B.  Adams’s  Maryland' s  Influence 
upon  Land  Cessions  to  the  United  States  (Johns  Hopkins 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


199 


University  Studies  in  Historical  and  Political  Science, 
Third  Series ,  i,  1885)  a  master-hand  pays  Washington 
his  due  for  originating  plans  of  trans-Alleghany  soli¬ 
darity;  this  likewise  is  the  theme  of  Archer  B.  Hul- 
bert’s  Washington  and  the  West  (1905)  wherein  is 
printed  Washington’s  Diary  of  September ,  178 J,  con¬ 
taining  the  first  and  unexpurgated  draft  of  his  classic 
letter  to  Harrison  of  that  year.  The  publications  of 
the  various  societies  for  internal  improvement  and 
state  boards  of  control  and  a  few  books,  such  as  Turner 
Camac’s  Facts  and  Arguments  Respecting  the  Great 
Utility  of  an  Extensive  Plan  of  Inland  Navigation  in 
America  (1805),  give  the  student  distinct  impressions 
of  the  difficulties  and  the  ideals  of  the  first  great  Ameri¬ 
can  promoters  of  inland  commerce.  Elkanah  Watson’s 
History  of  the  .  .  .  Western  Canals  in  the  State  of  New 
York  (1820),  despite  inaccuracies  due  to  lapses  of 
memory,  should  be  specially  remarked. 

For  the  rise  and  progress  of  turnpike  building  one 
must  remember  W.  Kingsford’s  History ,  Structure ,  and 
Statistics  of  Plank  Roads  (1852),  a  reliable  book  by  a 
careful  writer.  The  Cumberland  (National)  Road  has 
its  political  influence  carefully  adjudged  by  Jeremiah 
S.  Young  in  A  Political  and  Constitutional  Study  of  the 
Cumberland  Road  (1904),  while  the  social  and  personal 
side  is  interestingly  treated  in  county  history  style  in 
Thomas  B.  Searight’s  The  Old  Pike  (1894).  Motorists 
will  appreciate  Robert  Bruce’s  The  National  Road 
(1916),  handsomely  illustrated  and  containing  forty- 
odd  sectional  maps. 

The  best  life  of  Fulton  is  H.  W.  Dickinson’s  Robert 
Fulton ,  Engineer  and  Artist:  His  Life  and  Works  (1913), 
while  in  Alice  Crary  Sutcliffe’s  Robert  Fulton  and  the 


200 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


“  Clermont  ”  (1909),  the  more  intimate  picture  of  a  fam¬ 
ily  biography  is  given.  For  the  controversy  concerning 
the  Fulton-Livingston  monopoly,  note  W.  A.  Duer’s  A 
Course  of  Lectures  on  Constitutional  J urisprudence  and 
his  pamphlets  addressed  to  Cadwallader  D.  Colden. 
The  life  of  that  stranger  to  success,  the  forlorn  John 
Fitch,  was  written  sympathetically  and  after  assiduous 
research  by  Thompson  Westcott  in  his  Life  of  John 
Fitch  the  Inventor  of  the  Steamboat  (1858).  For  the 
pamphlet  war  between  Fitch  and  Rumsey  see  Alli- 
bone’s  Dictionary. 

The  Great  Lakes  have  not  been  adequately  treated. 
E.  Channing  and  M.  F.  Lansing’s  The  Story  of  the  Great 
Lakes  (1909)  is  reliable  but  deals  very  largely  with  the 
routine  history  covered  by  the  works  of  Parkman.  J.  0. 
Curwood’s  The  Great  Lakes  (1909)  is  stereotyped  in  its 
scope  but  has  certain  chapters  of  interest  to  students 
of  commercial  development,  as  has  also  The  Story  of 
the  Great  Lakes.  The  vast  bulk  of  material  of  value  on 
the  subject  lies  in  the  publications  of  the  New  York, 
Buffalo,  Michigan,  Wisconsin,  Illinois,  and  Chicago 
Historical  Societies,  whose  lists  should  be  consulted. 
These  publications  also  give  much  data  on  the  Mis¬ 
sissippi  River  and  western  commercial  development. 
S.  L.  Clemens’s  Life  on  the  Mississippi  (in  his  Writings , 
vol.  ix,  1869-1909)  is  invaluable  for  its  graphic  pictures 
of  steamboating  in  the  heyday  of  river  traffic.  A.  B. 
Hulbert’s  Waterways  of  Western  Expansion  ( Historic 
Highways ,  vol.  ix,  1903)  and  The  Ohio  River  (1906)  give 
chapters  on  commerce  and  transportation.  For  the  be¬ 
ginnings  of  traffic  into  the  Far  West,  H.  Inman’s  The 
Old  Santa  Fe  Trail  (1897)  and  The  Great  Salt  Lake 
Trail  (1914)  may  be  consulted,  together  with  the  pub- 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  201 

lications  of  the  various  state  historical  societies  of  the 
trans-Mississippi  States. 

Various  bibliographies  on  this  general  subject  have 
been  issued  by  the  Library  of  Congress.  Seymour 
Dunbar  gives  a  good  bibliography  in  his  A  History  of 
Travel  in  America ,  4  vols.  (1915) .  The  student  will  find 
quantities  of  material  in  books  of  travel,  in  which  con¬ 
nection  he  would  do  well  to  consult  Solon  J.  Buck’s 
Travel  and  Description ,  1765-1865  ( Illinois  State  His¬ 
torical  Library  Collections,  vol.  ix,  1914). 


J 


V 


INDEX 


Adams,  J.  Q.,  and  internal 
improvements,  145 

Albany,  Old  Bay  Path  to,  16; 
road  to  Baltimore,  58;  Cler¬ 
mont'1  s  voyage  to,  113 

Alexandria  (Va.),  rival  of  New 
York  City,  137 

Alleghanies,  pathways  across, 
17-19,  116  et  seq. 

Allegheny  Portage  Railwav, 
151 

American,  New  York,  quoted, 
182 

Appalachian  Mountains,  path¬ 
ways  across,  15-21 

Arkansas,  influence  of  river 
trade  on,  180 

“Army”  plan  of  occupying 
West,  4 

Ashley,  fur  trader,  186 

Audubon,  J.  J.,  description  of 
barge  journey,  72-73 

Baily,  Francis,  journey  in 
United  States  (1796-97), 
81-98;  quoted,  90-91 

Balcony  Falls,  trail  between 
James  and  Great  Kanawha 
Rivers  at,  19 

Baltimore,  road  to  Albany, 
58;  part  in  transportation 
development,  136-37,  143- 

151 

Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad, 
153;  Washington’s  vision 
realized  by,  10;  follows  old 
trail,  18,  29;  state  appropria¬ 
tion,  148;  contest  with  canal 


company,  150-51;  reaches 
Ohio,  151,  171 

Baltimore-Frederick  Turnpike, 
59 

Baltimore-Reisterstown  Turn¬ 
pike,  58-59,  143 
Baring  Brothers  contribute  to 
canal  work,  163 
Bay  Path,  see  Old  Bay  Path 
Becknell,  Captain  William, 
organizes  first  wagon  train 
for  Sante  Fe,  187 
Bedford,  Fort,  established,  50 
Bixb^q  Captain,  at  Hat  Island, 
181 

Black  Hawk  War  (1832),  162 
Bonneville,  Captain  B,  L.  E., 
on  Overland  Trail,  189 
“ Bonnyclabber  Country.”  86, 
87 

Boone,  Daniel,  19 
Bouquet,  Colonel  Henry,  criti¬ 
cizes  Washington,  50 
Boston  and  Albany  Railroad, 
13,  16 

Boulton  and  Watt  of  Birming¬ 
ham,  Fulton  uses  engine  of, 
HO,  113 

Braddock’s  Road,  51 
Brissot,  French  traveler  in 
America,  81,  83 
Broad  River,  trail  on,  19 
Brown,  Charles,  builds  hull  of 
Clermont,  113 

Brown,  George,  and  Baltimore 
and  Ohio  Railroad,  149 
Brownsville  (Penn.), growth  of, 
26 


203 


204 


INDEX 


Bryan,  Guy,  of  Philadelphia, 
66 

Buffalo,  demand  for  means  of 
transportation,  164,  170; 

harbor  improvement,  169; 
growth,  172 

Buffalo-Utica  Canal,  124;  see 
also  Erie  Canal 

Bunting,  “Red,”  stagecoach 
driver,  123 

Burt,  W.  A.,  discovers  iron 
ore  in  Michigan,  165-66 

Calhoun,  J.  C.,  and  internal 
improvements,  145 
California,  western  trail  to, 
188;  acquisition  of,  191 
Campbell,  fur  trader,  186 
Canals,  early  projects,  37-38; 
inadequacy  of,  157;  in  the 
West,  157  et  seq.;  see  also 
Chesapeake  and  Ohio  Canal, 
Erie  Canal,  Welland  Canal 
Catskill  Turnpike,  16 
Celoron  de  Blainville  sends 
English  traders  from  Ohio 
country,  25-26 

Charleston  (S.  C.)>  trails  to 
Tennessee  from,  19 
Charleston  (Wellsburg)  made 
port  of  entry,  77 
Charlotte  Dundas  (steamboat), 
109,  110 

Chastellux,  Chevalier  de, 
Washington’s  letter  to,  6 
Chesapeake  and  Ohio  Canal, 
Washington’s  vision  realized 
in,  10;  plan  for,  132,  143, 
144;  Company  formed,  145; 
engineering  difficulties,  146; 
state  subscription,  148; 
contest  with  Baltimore  and 
Ohio  Railroad,  150-51 
Chesapeake  and  Ohio  Rail¬ 
road,  19;  Washington’s 
vision  realized  in,  10;  fol¬ 
lows  old  route,  152 
Chicago,  harbor  improvement, 
161,  169;  canal  terminal. 


162;  growth,  162-63,  172; 
demand  for  means  of  trans¬ 
portation,  164,  170;  con¬ 
vention  discusses  rivers  and 
harbors  (1846),  169;  Illinois 
Central  Railroad  to,  170 
Chickasaw  Trail,  97 
Chillicothe  (0.)>  grant  to  Zane 
at,  47. 

China,  influence  on  West  of 
opening  ports,  191 
Chiswell,  Fort,  “Warrior’s 
Path”  from,  19 
Choctaw  Trail,  97 
Chouteau,  Robert,  184 
Cincinnati,  founded,  68;  ship¬ 
building,  76,  180;  made  port 
of  entry,  77;  see  also  Colum¬ 
bia 

Clark,  William,  fur  trader,  186 
Clay,  Henry,  and  internal 
improvements,  145;  on  West¬ 
ern  canal  project,  155 
Clermont  (steamboat),  78,  113- 
114 

Cleveland,  demand  for  means 
of  transportation,  164,  170; 
harbor  improvement,  169; 
growth,  172 

Clinton,  DeWitt,  Memorial 
(1816),  127;  and  Ohio  and 
Miami  canals,  159 
Columbia  (Cincinnati),  port 
of  entry,  74,  77;  Baily  at, 
9-2;  see  also  Cincinnati 
Comet  (steamboat),  78 
Conemaugh  River,  Kittanning 
Trail  follows,  17 
Congress,  Fitch  appeals  to, 
106;  appropriation  for  canal 
survey,  145 
Connecticut  Path,  16 
Connecticut  River,  Old  Bay 
^  Path,  15 

Connellsville  (Penn.)»  growth 
of,  26 

Converse,  J.  M.,  184 
Cooper,  Peter,  builds  engine 
Tom  Thvmh,  150 


INDEX 


205 


Cotton,  influence  on  river 
navigation,  180 
Cowpens,  description  of  in¬ 
habitants,  22-24 
Crawford,  agent  for  Washing¬ 
ton,  letter  to,  5 
Crisman,  Jesse,  owner  of  Hit  or 
Miss,  140 

Cumberland  (Md.),  eastern 
terminus  of  Cumberland 
Road,  119 

Cumberland  Gap,  “Warrior’s 
Path”  through,  19;  railroad 
through,  20 

Cumberland  Road,  136;  Wash¬ 
ington’s  vision  realized  in, 
10;  building  authorized,  114- 
115;  importance,  116;  plan, 
118-19;  route,  119-20;  build¬ 
ing  of,  120-21;  cost,  121; 
stage  lines,  122-23;  freight 
traffic,  123-24;  extension  to 
Missouri,  132;  Baltimore 
and,  143-44;  bibliography, 
199 

Day,  Sherman,  quoted,  140 
Deane,  Silas,  plan  for  payment 
of  Revolutionary  War  debt, 
2-3 

Delaware  Water  Gap,  17 
Delta  (La.),  changed  by  Missis¬ 
sippi  River,  177 
Detroit,  Washington  marks 
out  commercial  lines  to,  9; 
port  of  entry,  74;  demand 
for  transportation  facilities, 
164;  harbor,  169;  growth,  172 
Detroit  (lake  steamer),  169 
Dickens,  Charles,  cited,  100; 
describes  canal  boat  jour¬ 
ney,  140-41;  describes  aerial 
railway,  141-42 
Doddridge,  Notes,  quoted,  27- 
28 

Doolittle,  Sylvester,  builds 
V  andalia,  168 
Duane  (ship),  76-77 
Duquesne,  Fort,  26,  28,  50 


Enterprise  (steamboat),  79 
“Era  of  Good  Feeling,”  60 
Erie  (Penn.),  as  place  of  em¬ 
barkation,  35;  port  of  entry, 
74 

Erie  Canal,  35,  37,  58,  116-17; 
Washington  foresees,  9,  12; 
work  begun  (1817),  38,  128; 
Hawley  writes  challenge  to 
New  York  concerning,  115; 
state  enterprise,  118,  124- 
128,  136;  Hawley’s  original 
plan,  119;  building  of,  129- 
131;  completion,  132;  locks 
enlarged',  169 

Erie  Railroad,  153;  Washing¬ 
ton  forecasts,  9-10;  follows 
Indian  trade  route,  17 
“Erie”  war,  194 
Evans,  Oliver,  and  steam 
propelled  wagon,  102-03 
Everett,  Edward,  quoted,  12- 
13 

Fallen  Timber,  battle  of,  67 
Ferries,  46-47 

Fink,  Mike,  “the  Snag,”  64; 

“Snapping  Turtle, ”  64 
Fitch,  John,  steamboat  ex¬ 
periments,  12,  101-02,  103- 
105;  petition  to  Congress, 
106-07;  obtains  monopoly 
from  States,  106;  Fulton 
and,  108 

Forbes,  General  John,  cap¬ 
tures  Fort  Duquesne,  26; 
breaks  army  road,  50 
Forman,  Joshua,  bill  for  Erie 
Canal  project,  124 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  on  mak¬ 
ing  rivers  navigable,  30; 
and  international  boundary 
line,  164 

Frederick  (Md.),  trail  from,  18 
Free  Democrat,  St.  Joseph, 
quoted,  192-93 

Freeland,  H.,  account  of  the 
Clermont,  113-14 
French  as  commercial  rivals,  20 


206 


INDEX 


Fulton,  Robert,  steamboat  ex¬ 
periments,  12,  107-14;  and 
Livingston,  108-12;  on  Erie 
Canal  committee,  125;  bib¬ 
liography,  199 

Fur  trade,  French  and,  20; 
with  Illinois  country,  66; 
headquarters  at  St.  Louis, 
186 

Gallatin,  Albert,  scheme  of 
internal  improvements,  114 
Geddes,  James,  engineer,  125 
Gibbons,  Thomas,  steamboat 
competitor  of  Ogden,  132 
Great  Britain,  steamboat  ex¬ 
periments  in,  109;  Fulton 
imports  engine  from.  111, 
113 

Great  Kanawha  River,  Wash¬ 
ington  outlines  route  by 
way  of,  10;  as  trade  route,  19 
Great  Lakes,  Washington’s 
vision  concerning,  8;  French 
on,  20;  navigation  of,  154 
et  seq. 

Great  Meadows,  Washington 
on,  8;  Nemacolin’s  Path  by, 
18 

“  Great  Trail,  ”  28 
Great  Western  (lake  steamer), 
168 

Greensburg  (Penn.),  growth  of, 
26 

Greenville,  Treaty  of,  67 

Hamilton  County  (O.)  or¬ 
ganized,  68 

Hard  Times  (Miss.),  location 
changed  by  Mississippi 
River,  177 

Hawkins,  John,  Shreve  com¬ 
pared  with,  175 
Hawley,  Jesse,  and  Erie  Canal, 
115,  119 

Hazard,  of  Pennsylvania,  31; 

and  Lehigh  coal,  40 
Hempstead,  fur  trader,  186 
Henry  Clay  (steamboat),  156 


Hercules  (lake  freighter),  169 
Heydt,  Jost,  leads  immigrants 

emit  n  4Q 

“Highland  Trail,”  17,  20 
Hit  or  Miss  (canal  boat),  140 
Hockaday  and  Liggett  establish 
stage  line  to  Great  Salt 
Lake,  189 

Holliday,  Ben,  and  Overland 
Route,  190 

Horses,  pack,  21;  in  “Bonny- 
clabber  Country,  ”  86 
Hough,  Emerson,  The  Passing 
of  the  Frontier,  cited,  189 
(note) 

Houghton,  Douglass,  discovers 
copper  in  Michigan,  165 
Hudson  River,  Washington 
foresees  joining  to  Great 
Lakes,  8;  pathway  along, 
15;  see  also  Erie  Canal 


Illinois,  trade  with,  66;  growth 
of  population,  116,  156; 

canal  fever,  157,  161;  rail¬ 
way  projects,  171;  influence 
of  river  trade  on,  180 
Illinois  (lake  steamer),  168 
Illinois  Central  Railroad,  170 
Illinois-Michigan  Canal,  157- 
158,  161,  167,  168 
Illinois  River,  French  on,  20 
Independence  (Mo.),  Overland 
Trail  from,  189 
Indiana,  migration  to,  67; 
growth  of  population,  116, 
156;  canal  enthusiasm,  161; 
railway  projects,  171;  in¬ 
fluence  of  river  trade  on,  180 
Indians,  trails,  14,  18;  pack- 
horse  trade  with,  21,  27 
Ingles  ferry,  47 

Iowa,  influence  of  river  trade 
on,  180 

J.  M.  White  (river  boat),  184, 
185,  186 

James-Kanawha  Turnpike,  10 


INDEX 


207 


James  River,  17;  Washington’s 
vision  regarding,  8,  10;  as 
trade  route,  19 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  plan  for 
settlement  of  West,  4 
June  Bug,  stagecoach  line,  122 
Juniata  River,  Kittanning 
Trail  along,  17,  152 

Keever,  Captain,  builds  steam¬ 
boat  on  Ohio,  78 
Kent,  Chancellor,  and  Erie 
Canal,  127,  128 
Kentucky,  wagon  road  con¬ 
structed  to,  49-50;  migra¬ 
tion  to,  67 

King,  Billy,  builder  of  the 
J.  M.  White,  184 
Kittanning  Trail,  17,  25 
Knoxville  (Tenn.),  Baily 
reaches,  98 

Labad'e,  fur  trader,  186 
Lake  Shore  Railroad,  170,  171 
Lancaster  (O.),  grant  to  Zane 
at,  47 

Lancaster  Turnpike,  35,  53-58 
Laramie,  Fort,  Overland  Trail 
to,  189 

Lee,  Arthur,  on  cost  of  trans¬ 
portation  (1784),  66 
Lee,  Henry,  Washington  writes 
to,  9 

Lehigh  Coal  and  Navigation 
Company,  39,  43 
Lehigh  Coal  Company,  42-43 
Lehigh  Navigation  Company, 
42-43 

Lewis  and  Clark  expedition,  12 
Liggett  and  Holliday  run  stage 
to  Salt  Lake,  189 
Ligonier  (Penn.),  growth  of,  26 
Ligonier,  Fort,  50 
Lisa,  Manuel,  fur  trader,  186 
Livingston,  R.  R.,  and  Fulton, 
108-12;  on  Erie  Canal  com¬ 
mittee,  125 

Long,  Major,  expedition  up 
Missouri  River,  186 


Louisiana  cotton  exports,  180 
Louisiana  of  Marietta  (ship),  77 
Louisiana  Purchase,  75,  77 
Louisville,  importance  and 
growth,  68-69;  as  river  port, 
73-74,  77;  shipbuilding,  180 
Ludlow,  actor,  sings  The  Hunt¬ 
ers  of  Kentucky,  62-63 

Mackinaw  Island,  port  of 
entry,  74 

Marietta  (O.),  founded,  67-68; 
shipbuilding,  76;  as  port  of 
entry,  77 

Maryland,  ’Washington  out¬ 
lines  trade  routes  for,  10; 
roads,  49,  53,  58-59;  cotton 
grown  in,  85;  Cumberland 
Road,  119;  canals,  136,  144; 
Canal  Company  formed, 
145;  see  also  Baltimore 
Massac,  Fort  (Ill.),  port  of 
entry,  74,  75,  77;  Baily  at, 
93 

Massachusetts,  Old  Bay  Path, 
16;  roads,  44,  54-55 
Mauch  Chunk  (Penn.),  coal 
from,  40 

Maynard  and  Morrison,  trade 
with  Illinois,  66 
Menard,  fur  trader,  186 
Mercer  quoted,  148 
Miami  Canal,  159 
Michigan,  growth  of  popula¬ 
tion,  116,  156;  plan  for  Erie 
Canal  funds  from  sale  of 
land  in,  117,  125;  develop¬ 
ment,  164;  “Toledo  War,” 
164-65;  minerals,  165 
Michigan  (lake  steamer),  168 
Milwaukee,  demand  for  trans¬ 
portation  facilities,  164;  har¬ 
bor  improvement,  169 
Minnesota,  development,  164 
Mirror,  New  York,  prints 
The  Hunters  of  Kentucky,  62 
Mississippi  cotton  exports,  180 
Mississippi  River,  Washing¬ 
ton’s  vision  of  navigation  on, 


208 


INDEX 


Mississippi  River — Continued 
12;  French  on,  20;  impor¬ 
tance  to  commerce,  160; 
canal  to  connect  with  Lake 
Michigan,  161,  163;  naviga¬ 
tion,  176  et  seq eccentrici¬ 
ties,  177,  183 

Missouri,  influence  of  river 
trade  on,  180;  admitted  as 
State,  187 

Missouri  River,  navigation  on, 
186,  187,  188 

Mohawk  River,  route  through 
Appalachians,  16 
Mohawk  Trail,  16 
Mohawk  Turnpike,  16 
Mohawk  Valley,  Washington 
and,  7 

Monongahela  Farmer  (ship),  76 
Monroe,  James,  Fulton  writes 
to,  107,  110,  112;  recom¬ 
mends  congressional  aid  for 
canals,  145 

Montreal,  furs  brought  to, 
20;  rival  of  New  York  City, 
125,  126 

Moody,  John,  The  Railroad 
Builders,  cited,  157  (note) 
Morey,  Samuel,  inventor  of 
stern-wheeler,  104,  109,  110 
Morgantown  (Penn.),  growth 
of,  26 

Morris,  Gouverneur,  of  New 
York,  31,  36 

Nashville  (Tenn.),  trails  to,  19 
Natchez  (Miss.),  Baily  at,  93, 
97 

Natchez  Trace,  96 
National,  stagecoach  line,  122 
Nemacolin  Path,  18,  25 
Newberry,  Oliver,  of  Detroit, 
builds  Michigan,  168 
New  Madrid,  Baily  at,  93 
New  Orleans,  made  open  port, 
75;  Baily  at,  95;  steamboat 
tonnage  of  (1843),  181 
New  Orleans  (steamboat),  180, 
181,  187 


New  York  (State),  Washing¬ 
ton  foresees  communication 
lines  of,  9;  canal  project, 
35-38;  roads,  44,  59;  Living¬ 
ston  obtains  steamboat 
monopoly,  109;  steamboat 
grant  to  Livingston,  Roose¬ 
velt  and  Fulton,  111;  rail¬ 
roads,  151,  153;  see  also 
Erie  Canal 

New  York  Central  Railroad, 
153;  Washington'  and,  9; 
follows  Mohawk  Trail,  16, 17 
New  York  City,  Baily  at,  84; 
Erie  Canal  and,  125,  126; 
tonnage  compared  to  that 
of  river  ports,  181 
Niagara,  French  at,  25 
Niagara  (steamboat),  156 
Nickel  Plate  Railroad,  17 
Northwest,  Deane’s  plan  for, 
2-3;  navigation  of  Great 
Lakes,  154  et  seq.’,  immigra¬ 
tion  to,  167-68 

Ogden,  Aaron,  vs.  Gibbon,  132 
Ohio,  migration  to,  67;  growth 
of  population,  116,  156;  and 
Cumberland  Road,  117; 
canals,  157-60;  admitted  as 
State  (1802),  158;  railroads, 
171;  influence  of  river  trade 
on,  180 

Ohio  and  Lake  Erie  Company, 
145 

Ohio  Canal,  157,  159,  168,  169 
Ohio  River,  Washington  and, 
8,  12;  access  of  French  and 
English  to,  25;  value  of 
cargoes  on  (1800),  74;  Bal¬ 
timore  and  Ohio  Railroad 
reaches  (1853),  151,  183; 
navigation,  180 
Old  Bay  Path,  15,  16 
Ontario  (steamboat),  156 
Orange,  Fort  (Albany),  16; 

see  also  Albany 
Ordinance  of  1787,  170 
Oregon,  western  trail  to,  188; 


INDEX 


209 


Oregon — Continued 

effect  of  acquisition  on  trans¬ 
portation,  191 
Orleans  (steamboat),  78 
Ormsbee,  of  Connecticut, 
makes  steamboat  model,  104 
Ottawa  (Ill.),  canal  terminal, 
162 

Overland  Stage  Company,  189 
Overland  Trail,  189,  191 

Palmyra  (Tenn.),  as  river  port, 
74 

Pedee  River,  17 
“Pennamite”  war,  194 
Pennsylvania,  Washington 
and  transportation  in,  9, 
10-11;  canals,  83-35,  136; 
roads,  35,  44,  45,  48-49,  50, 
53-54,  119-20;  “Bonny- 

clabber  Country,”  86,  87; 
and  Great  Lakes,  138;  rail¬ 
ways,  151 

Pennsylvania  Canal,  132; 
Washington  forecasts,  9; 
route,  139;  engineering 
achievement,  139-40 
Pennsylvania  Railroad,  142, 
153;  Washington  and,  9-10; 
follows  Indian  trail,  29; 
incorporated  (1846),  151; 
reaches  Ohio  River,  171 
Perkins,  fur  trader,  186 
Philadelphia,  roads  to,  48-49; 
meeting  to  protest  against 
monopoly  of  Lancaster 
Turnpike,  55;  Baily  at,  84; 
rival  of  New  York  City,  137 
Philadelphia  and  Lancaster 
Turnpike  Road  Company, 
53-54 

Philadelphia  Road,  49 
Pickering  plan  of  occupying 
West,  4 

Pike,  Captain  Z.  M.,  93 
Pioneer,  stagecoach  line,  122 
Pioneer  (steamboat),  156 
Pitt,  Fort,  28 

Pittsburgh,  growth,  26,  67 ; 


trade  with,  65-66,  66-67,  75; 
shipbuilding,  76;  port  of 
entry,  77;  Baily  reaches,  88 
Platt,  Judge,  and  Erie  Canal, 
126,  127 

Pontiac’s  Rebellion,  26-27,  34 
“Pony  Express,”  192 
Potomac  Canal  Company,  143 
Potomac  Company,  31-33,  138 
Potomac  River,  Washington’s 
vision  regarding,  8,  10;  com¬ 
merce  on,  17-18 
Prairie  (steamboat),  182 
Presq’  Isle  (Erie)  recommended 
as  place  £)f  embarkation,  35 
Prices  in  1800,  92 
Putnam,  General  Rufus,  ad¬ 
vocates  Pickering  plan,  3-4 

Quebec,  furs  brought  to,  20 
Queen  of  the  West  (British 
steamer),  182 

Railroads,  134  et  seq.;  see  also 
names  of  railroads 
Revolutionary  War,  plans  for 
payment  of  debt  of,  2-3 
Rhodes,  Mayor  of  Philadel¬ 
phia,  30 

Rideau  canal  system,  160 
Rivers  and  harbors,  govern¬ 
ment  policy  of  improvement, 
12;  Chicago  convention 
(1846),  169 

Roads,  44  et  seq.,  83;  tolls,  59- 
60;  see  also  Cumberland 
Road 

Robinson,  Moncure,  139-40 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  quoted, 
176 

Rumsey,  James,  12;  general 
manager  of  Potomac  Com¬ 
pany,  32;  steamboat  experi¬ 
ments,  101,  102,  103,  106; 
Virginia  grants  monopoly 
to,  106;  Fulton  and,  108 
Russell,  Majors,  and  Waddell 
found  Overland  Stage  Com¬ 
pany,  189 


Mi 


210 


INDEX 


Rutherfordton  Trail,  19 

Sacramento,  stage  line  to,  189 
St.  Clair  (brig),  76 
St.  Joseph  (Mo.),  stage  line 
from,  189 

St.  Lawrence  canal  system,  160 
St.  Louis,  shipbuilding,  180; 
headquarters  for  fur  trade, 
186;  trade  with  Santa  Fe, 
187 

St.  Mary’s  River  Ship  Canal, 
164,  167,  168 

Salt  Lake  City,  stage  lineto,  189 
Samson  (lake  freighter),  169 
Sandusky,  port  of  entry,  74 
San  Francisco,  Overland  Trail 
to,  189 

San  Lorenzo,  Treaty  of,  75 
Santa  Fe,  trade  with,  187 
Santa  Fe  Trail,  191 
“Sapphire  Country,”  19,  152 
Saturday  Advertiser,  Liver¬ 
pool,  on  the  Duane,  76-77 
Schoph,  J.  D.,  crosses  moun¬ 
tains  in  chaise,  66 
Schuylkill-Susquehanna  Canal, 
35 

Searight  describes  freight 
wagons  on  Cumberland 
Road,  123-24 

Sellers,  Captain  Isaiah,  182 
Shreve,  Henry,  builds  double¬ 
decked  steamboat,  79;  in¬ 
vents  flat-bottomed  steam¬ 
boat,  175 

Society  for  Promoting  the 
Improvement  of  Roads  and 
Inland  Navigation,  31,  34- 
35,  39,  54 

South,  trade  with,  65;  demands 
for  commerce,  174 
Southern  Belle  (steamboat), 

'  181 

Southern  Chesapeake  and  Ohio 
Railroad,  29 
Southern  Railway,  19 
Stanton,  E.  M.,  has  model  of 
J.  M.  White,  186 


Stephenson,  Robert,  on  Penn¬ 
sylvania  Canal,  140 
Stevens,  E.  A.,  invents  twin- 
screw  propeller,  104 
Sublette,  fur  trader,  186 
Sultana  (steamboat),  181 
Superior  (steamboat),  156,  167 
Superior,  Lake,  copper  and 
iron  deposits  near,  164; 
commerce  from,  166-67 
Susquehanna  River,  Wash¬ 
ington  foresees  joining  to 
West,  8 


Taverns,  56-57,  82-83 
Taylor,  Acting-Governor  of 
New  York,  and  Erie  Canal, 
127,  128 

Tennessee,  trails  to,  19;  cotton 
exports,  180 

Tennessee  Path,  Baily  on,  96 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  quoted,  135 
Thomas,  P.  E.,  and  Baltimore 
and  Ohio  Railroad,  149 
Thompson,  Chief  Justice  of 
New  York,  and  Erie  Canal, 
127 

Toledo  (O.),  demand  for  trans¬ 
portation  facilities,  164 
“Toledo  War,”  164-65,  194 
Tom  Thumb,  Peter  Cooper’s 
engine,  150 

Transportation,  Conestoga 
wagons,  57-58,  86;  steam¬ 
boats,  100  et  seq.;  stage¬ 
coaches,  122;  “J.  Murphy 
wagons,”  190;  see  also 
Canals,  Ferries,  Horses, 
Railroads,  Roads 
Tupper,  General  Benjamin, 
104 

Twain,  Mark,  cited,  181 
Tyson,  Jonathan,  52 

e 

Unaka  Mountains,  see  Alle- 
ghanies 

Union  Canal,  35,  139,  151;  see 
also  Pennsylvania  Canal 


INDEX 


211 


Union  Pacific  Railroad,  191, 
193 

Uniontown  (Penn.),  growth  of, 
26 

Vandalia  (lake  freighter),  168 
Vesuvius  (steamboat),  78 
Virginia,  Washington’s  vision 
of  trade  routes  for,  10;  In¬ 
dian  trails,  18;  roads,  44-45, 
49,  119;  negroes,  85;  to¬ 
bacco,  85;  canals,  136,  144 
Virginia  Road  (Braddock’s 
Road),  51 

Walk-in-the-Water  (steam¬ 
boat),  132,  156,  167,  172 
“Warrior’s  Path,”  19,  20 
Washington  (D.  C.),  Baily  at, 
84,  85-86 

W  ashington,  first  double¬ 
decked  steamboat,  79,  175 
Washington,  Port,  68 
Washington,  George,  vision  of 
inland  navigation,  4  et  seq., 
193;  doctrine  of  expansion, 
6;  journey  to  West,  7-9; 
letter  to  Harrison,  10,  53, 
117,  127;  Journal,  10;  and 
river  improvement,  31;  presi¬ 
dent  of  Potomac  Company, 
32;  and  army  roads,  50; 
and  crop  rotation,  85;  proph¬ 
ecy  regarding  millstones,  87- 
88;  Rumsey  and,  100-01, 
105-06 

Watauga,  Fort,  19 
Waters,  Dr.,  of  New  Madrid, 
builds  schooner,  95 
Watson,  Elkanah,  of  New 
York,  31,  33,  36,  37,  54 
Wayne,  Anthony,  67 


Webster,  Pelatiah,  and  settle¬ 
ment  of  Northwest,  3 
Weiser,  Conrad,  26 
Welch,  Sylvester,  139 
Welland  Canal,  12,  155,  160, 
168,  169 

Western  Engineer  (steamboat), 
186 

Western  Inland  Lock  Naviga¬ 
tion  Company,  31,  36-37 
Western  Maryland  Railway, 
18 

Westfield  River,  Old  Bay  Path 
along,  16 

Westover,  stagecoach  driver, 
122-23 

Wheeling,  western  terminus 
of  Cumberland  Road,  119 
White,  of  Pennsylvania  31, 
40,  43 

Wickham,  Nathan,  49 
Wilderness  Road,  47,  50 
Winchester  (Va.),  trail  from, 
18 

Wisconsin,  development  of, 
164 

Woodworth,  Samuel,  TheHunt - 
ers  of  Kentucky,  62-63;  The 
Old  Oaken  Bucket,  62 

Yadkin  River,  trail  on,  19 
Yates,  Judge,  and  Erie  Canal, 
127 

Yoder,  Jacob,  64-65 
York  Road,  52 

Yorktown  (steamboat),  181, 
182 

Zane,  Ebenezer,  47,  88 
Zanesville  (O.),  grants  to  Zane 
near,  47 


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The  paths  of  inland  commerce 


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